CEIMES OF THE CIYIL WAR. 



AN D 



CURSE OF THE FUNDING SYSTEM. 



BY HENRY CLAY DEAN. 



BALTniOEE: 

PRINTED FOR THE PUBLISHER, BY INNES & COMPANY 

1868. 






PEDICATION, 



To tlie brave men. who, unmoved by the violence of party; unsedueed by the 
temptations of wealth, and unawed by the cruelty of war, defended the priceless 
treasures of Constitutional Liberty; endured banishment, tortures, and death, 
rather than surrender theii birthright, transmitted by the Fathers of 1770— 

To those upright soldiers, who, through five years of carnage, corruption, 
plunder, rapine, and desolation preserved their hands unstaiLcd with innocent 
blood, their souls unpolluted willi plunder, and maintained their manhood in-, 
violate- 
To the laboring poor, whose subsistence is devoured by the combinations of 
Monopoly, Bankruptcy, Usury, Extortion, Standing Armies, Tax-gatherers and 
Usurpation— 

To the immortal dead, who surrendered their lives in defence of the honor and 
safety of ttieir homes, and poured out their blcod in rich libations to the God of 

l^iberty- is this book dedicated by 

THE AUTHOR. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 186S, by 

WILLIAM T. SMITHSON, 

Jn the Clerk's Office of the District Court of tlie District Of Maryland, 



Stereotyped by 
BY AN & niCKETTS. 



PTJBLISHEE^S PREFACE. 



"The Crimes of the Civil War and Curse of the Funding 
System," which is now presented to the American people, is a 
most remarkable book. It is a plain rehearsal of thrilling inci- 
dents which have occurred in this country within the past few 
years ; it is a record of some of the basest crimes ever inflicted 
upon man by his fellow ; it graphically depicts many heart- 
rending outrages perpetrated upon humanity, in the name of lib- 
erty, by the unbridled passions of a fanartical despotism ; it is 
a faithful chronicle of passing events and coiitemplates the char- 
acter of men as photographed by themselves in the sun-light of 
heaven — it views things as they really exist — fairly, honestly 
and openly ; it withdraws the veil of mystery which conceals 
the hideous form of a ruined government and an oppressed peo- 
|.le. 

History is made to repeat itself, although upon a grander scale 
ihan the world ever before contemplated. Every page has been 
nibjected to an unscrupulous inquisition; facts and figures are 
made to speak the untrammelled truth, and the entire testimony 
is unquestionable. The style is terse and the diction uncom- 
promising, and every sentence is clothed in a strong lucid lan- 
guage which has the impress of the masterly hand and spirit 
of the distinguished author. 

The work is gotten up in a plain, neat form, sufficiently cheap 
to be in reach of the general reader ; typographical errors have 
been avoided as far as possible, and we trust it will find its way 
to the offices, shops and firesides of the great masses of the labor- 
ing and over-taxed people of the United States. It is the cham- 
pion of truth and justice, and we send it forth on its mission, 
with full confidence in its power, to defend the right and maintain 
its principles. 

Wm. T. Smithson, Publisher. 



''3 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGK 

Crimes of the Civil War and Curse of the Fundiug System - Reasons for the 

Publication of this Book — 1st, General — 2d, Personal. . 1 

BOOK FIEST. 

CHAPTER I. 
Destruction of Self-Government ... 35 

CHAPTER II. 
Destruction of Civilization by Mongrelism , 09 

CHAPTER III. 
Invasion of Personal Rights .31 

CHAPTER IV. 

Violation of the Rights of the States by the Federal CTOverument 41 

CHAPTER V. 
Instituting Retrospective Test Oaths to Destroy the Freedom of the Elective 

Franchise 50 

CHAPTER VI. 

Destruction of Fair and Free Elections 54 

CHAPTER VII. 

Disintegration of Congress dO 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Duress of Congress 72 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Character of Congress that Robs us of Liberty 7.5 

CHAPTER X. 

The Corruption of Congress in Creating the Debt 80 

CHAPTER XI. 

Driving the Poor into the Meshes of the Flesh Dealers and Blood Market % 

CHAPTER XII. 

Violation of the Laws of Nations lOr. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Torture, Cruelty, and Outrage 130 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Overthrow of the Constitution of the United States 142 

CHAPTER XV. 

Degradation of the Judiciary 145 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The New Nation 151 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Infidelity of the Clergy 175 

BOOK SECOXD. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Conspiracy of the Treasury Department 184 

CHAPTER II. 
The Manner in which the Loan was Obtained ISf) 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

CHAPTER III. 
The War Debt is not a Just Debt , 201 

CHAPTER IV. 
The War Debt is Unconstitutional — 20G 

CHAPTER V. 
The War Debt is a Breach of Trust 212 

CHAPTER VI. 
We are Unable to Pay this Debt 211 

CHAPTER VII. 

Constitutional Amendments cannot Enforce the Payment of such a Debt 222 

CHAPTER VIII. 
No one Generation can Bind its Successors to Pay its Debts 220 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Duty of the Friends of Peace to Repudiate War Debts 2:>2 

CHAPTER X. 
A Plan for the Payment of the Debt 338 

CHAPTER XI. 

Correspondence between the Author and Hoi'ace Greeley , 212 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Sacred Debt 251 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Repudiation tlie last Refuge of Profligacy , 2(11 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Character of tlie I-oan which Constitutes the Debt . 209 

BOOK THIRD. 

CHAPTER I. 

Usury 27;') 

CHAPTER II. 

Curse ol the Funding System ,,321 

CHAPTER III. 
Debt is Slavery .'i2S 

CHAPTER IV. 

Bondholders and Bondmen 332 

CHAPTER V. 

The Funding System Destroys a Stable Currency 839 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Funding System will Concentrate the Landed Estates of the Country 311 

CHAPTER Vn. 
The Funding System Creates Distrust between Capital and Labor .'!)" 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Sectional Character of the Funding System 351 

BOOK FOURTH. 

CHAPTER I. 

Mr. Jefferson's Objections to National Banks SG6 

CHAPTER II. 

National Banks Unnecessarj' 371 

CHAPTER III. 

No Banking System can be made Secure 37S 

CHAPTER IV. 
The First Great Crime of the Chase Banking System 383 



CONTENTS. VI I 

PAGK. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Second Great Crime of Chase's Banking System 386 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Tliird Great Crime of Chase's Banking System 391 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Expiring Crime of Chase's Banking System 405 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Jolin LaAV and Chase, witli tlieir Respective Systems Compared 412 

CHAPTER IX. 
Squandering the Public Lands the Basis of Stock-Gambling 420 

CHAPTER X. 
French Assignats and National Bank Notes 424 

BOOK FIFTH. 

CHAPTER I. 
Unhealthy Condition of the Public Mind in Regard to Public Assistance..,. , 430 

CHAPTER 11. 
Prevailing Ignorance of the Nature i if Tariffs , , . . 436 

CHAPTER III. 
Devices to Obstruct Trade , 441 

CHAPTER IV. 
No one Nation can Produce Everytliing 445 

CHAPTER V. 
The two Principles in Favor of a Protective Tariff Contradicted each Other. . .\ 447 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Tariff rests upon Endless Contradiction 450 

CHAPTER VII. 

How Protective Tariffs make Goods ( 'heap 4.57 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Protective Tariffs are in Conflict with the Genius of our Government 460 

CHAPTER IX. 
High Tariffs Beget Smuggling 465 

CHAPTER X. 
High Revenue Tariffs Unjust 468 

CHAPTER XI. 
Villainies of the Tariff 477 

CHAPTER XII. 
Character of Manufacturers 481 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Curse of Manufacturing Monopolies 487 

BOOK SIXTH. 

CHAPTER I. 
The Curse of the Debt Greater than the Debt Itself 493 

CHAPTER II. 
The Tax-Gatherer 499 

CHAPTER III. 
The Spies 507 

CHAPTER I\'. 
Military Usurpers 509 



Re ASCIIS FOE THE PUBLIC ATIOIST OF 

THIS Work. 



1st. general. 

The truth needs neither eulogy nor apology, whilst the most 
extravagant praises and pretensions are powerless to shield false- 
hood from exposure. 

A review of the unfortunate condition of the country presents 
but little to captivate the reader and even less to stimulate the 
\n-iter to a style which may entertain the mind Avhich does not at 
the same time mantle the soul with unutterable shame. 

Reckless tyrants have trampled down the rights and manhood 
of the people together, and the poor privilege of complaint con- 
ceded to the dying culprit and not denied to the rich man in hell, 

prohibited in one-half of the United States. 

Our Government is in nothing uniform except its coutem^it of 
law, and powerful only for the oppression of the people. 

Every officer seems to contemplate his office as an engine of 
destruction in which he is engaged to work the ruin of the partic- 
ular department of government entrusted to his care. 

The Postmaster General for the last five years has been violat- 
ing the mails. 

The Secretary of the Treasury has been squandering the public 
wealth. 

The Secretary of the Navy has been enfeebling our Naval 
power. 

The Secretary of War, all crimsoned with innocent blood, is 
employing the army for the destruction of the country. 
1 



2 GEXEEAL EEASOXS FOR PUBLICATION. 

The Secretary of State has been subverting constitutional law, 
and cli-;o;racing our form of government at home and abroad. 

The Secretary of the Interior has been conniving with public 
jobbers to defraud the government of its most valuable lands. 

The Attorney General is gravely burlesquing nonsense itself by 
defining the Constitutional construction of unconstitutional laws, 
and is in conspiracy with Military Commissions to murder inno- 
cent women. 

The President is administering the government through Mili- 
tary Satraps in a manner unknown to Eepublican systems and 
diso-raeeful to despotisms which regard tlie character of those en- 
trusted with power. "VVe now witness among our kindred the 
debasement of a civilized people who are forced to submit to the 
insult and domination of barbarian negroes and foreign vagabonds. 

Tlie Courts of the country are infamously corrupt. 

The State Legislatures and Congress are flagrantly accessible to 
bribes, which have become the only tangible basis of special and 
an essential necessity in general legislation. 

The people of the late Confederate States, after encountering 
the terrible vicissitudes of war, were overtaken by a famine which 
inflicted frightful forms of starvation, and are now overrun and 
robbed by predatory invasions, and endangered by the insurrec- 
tion of domestic savages incited by foreign incendiaries. 

Each step of advancing usurpation upon the part of these 
tvrants has been met by a receding cowardice upon the part of the 
people, which has yielded to Its behests. 

Capital has availed itself of the general distress to combine its 
powers to oppress labour ; labour has conceded and begged in the 
vain hope of appeasing capital, until Banks, Tariffs and Usury, 
the three great criminals of all governments, are now employed 
l)v the funded system to create revenues, keep uj) military estab- 
lishments and enslave the people. 

This enquiry into the causes and remedy of the condition of the 



GENERAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 3 

country is prepared for the plain tliinking people, who determine 
to be free from the dangerous errors of demagogues and the over- 
shadowing power of capital. 

AYhile a people should not be insensible to the glory, grandeur, 
and power of a good government, and should duly aAvard its just 
meed to courage, it should never be forgotten that there can be no 
glory won by self-destruction ; that civil wars should find no last- 
ing place in our records; that magnanimity to a fallen victim 
who has proven his courage on the battle field, should consign to 
oblivion his faults. Upon the other hand, the thief, robber, 
murderer or incendiary who, loaded down v\dth the plunder of 
defenceless families and leaving a desert waste in his bloody trail, 
fled before avenging armies, should be held up to mankind on 
the gibbet of history to v\^arn others who have started upon the 
mistaken road to glory, not to strew their pathway with the relics 
of virtue and prosperity, nor pave their line of march with 
human skulls. 

The people yet, have it within their power to restore their free- 
dom, retrieve their lost character, though unable to bring back 
the dead, or efface those terrible scars inflicted upon the violated 
person of liberty in her contests Avith arbitrary power. The 
people can no longer look for safety in mercenary party organiza- 
tions, or rely for relief upon demagogues. The freemen of Amer- 
ica must learn to think for themselves. These following questions 
must be searchingly put to the people : 

I. By what right can any generation contract to enslave suc- 
cessive generations, and mortgage the labor of future centuries to 
pay the debt created to satiate hate and aggrandize a lawless cupid- 
ity? 

II. Can any government justly IcAy a tax upon the labor of 
the country to support and increase its untaxed capital, and en- 
slave industry to speculation ? 

III. By ivliat earthly poioci^ can such a claim be enforced upon 



4 GEXEEAL REASONS FOE PUBLICATION. 

» 
a people who are aroused to a sense of its injustice, and shrinl' 

with horror from the recollection of the bloody crimes ivhich en- 
tailed it upo7i us f 

IV. Can any government retain its freedom and continue sub- 
ject to subsidies more than equivalent to ordinary rents, wliicli are 
levied for the benefit of a privileged class upon the labouring and 
agricultural classes, making the distinction between the rich and 
the poor clearly marked and indelibly drawn ? 

V. Is it profitable, is it desirable, nay, is it possible, to over- 
throw our present system of poj)ular government and substitute 
for it an arbitrary government, or a monied aristocracy or limited 
monarchy, for the enforcement of a debt which has been contrac- 
ted for the most part without tlie authority of law ? 

VI. Will the people of this country give organic guarantees 
for the payment of a debt due to citizens of this and other coun- 
tries, the payment of which is subject to the action of the courts, 
simply to avoid the faithful interpretation of the law by judicial 
tribunals to which every other claim is legally subjected ? 

VII. Is it possible for any popular government, in violation 
of all historical precedent, to long continue the victim of this un- 
just and arbitrary power, administered by a few through combi- 
nations of force, fraud and fanaticism ? 

VIII. If any future Congress should refuse to make appro- 
priations for the liquidation of such debt, or for the payment of 
standing armies to enforce it, how then could constitutional guar- 
antees protect capital from taxation, or make labor support idle- 
ness in her exorbitant demands ? 

IX. Were the powers which created this debt legally elected 
by free and fair elections ? 

X. A^'^ere the Legislative bodies which made the appropriations 
legally constituted ? 

XI. In Avhat manner, for what purposes and by what author- 
ity was the money spent which had been thus appropriated ? 



GENERAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 5 

XII. "What must be the relative condition of capital and labor 
under the direction and control of the funding system ? 

XIII. By what authority and under what pretense was the 
present compound system of fraudulent Banking — the illicit oif- 
spring of Financial debauchery, imposed upon the country ? 

XIV. Why are the systems of duties, excises and direct taxes 
levied for the purpose of oppressing the poor and aggrandizing 
the rich, to create a hateful monicd Oligarchy in the land ? 

XV. Why have the resources of the country, the business of 
the people, the harmony of society, and the hopes of civilization 
and Christianity been swept from the land ? 

XVI. What shall be done to restore our lost liberties? 

All of these questions are now upon us. They are awaiting 
that careful canvass which ultimately overtakes every subject 
among thinking people in an enlightened age. 

The issue may be protracted but cannot be doubtful. God and 
justice are upon the side of the good and just. 

Intellect will struggle with intellect, and cultivated reason will 
reassert her dominion over King Mob and his disgusting retinue 
of drunken and debauched demagogues, with the multitude of 
infuriated rabble, drunk with blood and rioting in crime. Socie- 
ty will make her requisitions upon her Jeffersons and Franklins, 
her Miltons and Lockes, to reconstruct injustice the great super- 
structure of liberty which has been laid in ashes by incendiary fires, 
and determine questions which have been raised by the passionate 
fanatics and mercenary tricksters who ascribe to government no 
higher object than to furnish support to malignant partizans, and 
aspire to no higher position for themselves than to gather up the 
fly-blown offal from the table of political power, and boldly avow 
no other object in political contests than the acquisition of political 
ascendency. 

In this contest between idle capital and active labor, each of the 
contestants will summon all of their ancient allies to their support. 



G GENERAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 

Capital will ardently espouse the cause of standing armies, strong 
governments, the union of Church and State, the growth of mo- 
nopolies, the funding system and arbitrary power. 

Upon the other hand, labor has no allies but the justice of her 
cause, the intelligence of her people and the strong arm of self 
defence. 

It is refreshing to turn the eye backward through the dim track 
of centuries, and behold the manly self-respect of our hardy an- 
cestors who suffered not majesty itself to trifle M'ith their liberties 
or the servants of the king to trample upon the privacy of his 
subjects. 

The heavens are darkened with the lowering clouds of a finan- 
cial hurricane which no power can arrest. 

AVhen the storm comes in its terrible desolation, it will sweep 
down every thing before it. 

Standing armies cannot enforce the obligations of such a debt, 
although they may increase it, and thereby hasten repudiation ; 
which they are now doing by the establishment of military gov- 
ernment in the South, and which they are proposing in every part 
of the country. 

Constitutional amendments cannot enforce the debt. When 
adopted they will be futile in the hands of revolutionists, who 
have set the example of repudiating constitutions without amend- 
ments, and all other obligations. We most respectfully commit 
the public debt to time, which outlaws all claims by limitation. 

The debt cannot reach the next generation, and if it does it will 
not be bound by the foolish contracts of this, and will do well if 
it meets its own obligations. 

We wish bondholders no worse luck than to fall into the hands 
of negroes, who want cheap food and raiment, and will vote down 
tariffs and taxes. Then what becomes of the public debt ? 

Leaving all these questions to time, the arbiter of events, cast 
your eyes to the coming storm. 



GENEKAL REASONS FOK PUBLICATION. 7 

We have a high duty to perforin, which is to restore the Consti- 
tutional obligations of the Government, to secure the rights of tlie 
States and the liberties of the people. And if villainous ca[)ital 
or overbearing monopoly stands in the way, it will not impede our 
progress or arrest our purpose. It were better that every man in 
America were bankrupt, than that we be crushed by perpetual 
debt. 

The character of the funding system has been examined and 
exposed because, since the commencement of the war the triple 
swindle of the banking system has transferred at least $300,000,- 
000 of the property and labor of the poor to the coffers of the 
rich. 

1. By inflating the currency from 1862 to 1864, from par to 
$2 89 100 premium, advancing the price of every article used by 
the poor in this ratio, and enhancing the value to the extent of 
the hoarded money in the coffers of the rich. 

2. Securing this enhanced value to the rich by funding at par 
the inflated paper to be paid in gold under pretense of reducing 
the volume of paper money. 

3. When the funding was secured, then renewing the inflation 
through the National Banks, and giving to corporations a double 
interest — interest on the bonds and discount upon the bank notes, 
which are untaxed and depreciating 

The tariff, under pretext of protecting manufactures, has been 
an instrument in the hands of the rich to oppress the poor. It is a 
decree passed to' limit the amount and quality of the food and 
raiment of the consumer, for the benefit of the producer. The 
extent and atrocity of our taxation defies comment. It has placed 
over us an army of spies, detectives, contractors, general and sub- 
ordinate officers, who meet us at every corner of the street, and in 
every avenue of business. 

Placing a money-grabber between the mouths of the poor and 
the butcher shop — a stamp between the medicine and your dying 



8 GENEEAL EEASOjSTS FOR PUBLICATION. 

cliild — a tariff between your shivering body and the clothing- 
store — between the muslin shroud and the corpse of your wife. 

We may be charged with a purpose to repudiate this debt. 
Upon this subject I have but a few words — 

The collection of this debt is a question for the determination 
of the courts. I shall not, therefore, more than refer it to those 
courts. Are we bound for this debt ? If so, how and by what 
law? 

We are not bound by the Constitution to pay it; because it was 
contracted in a war to overthrow the Constitution and destroy the 
system of government under it. 

We are not bound by the theory of^ our Government to pay it, 
because the debt was contracted in the destruction of the Ameri- 
can theory of government. 

We are not bound by the laws of civilized warfare to pa}- it ; 
because these laws, as understood by Americans and laid down by 
our treaty with JNIexico, were violated at every step of the war 
from its inception to its conclusion. 

AVe are not bound in justice to pay this debt, for we have re- 
ceived nothing in return for it. Not only no equivalent, but it 
has been contracted in the destruction of everything held sacred 
in property, obligation and security. There has been no qvM pro 
quo. All this is outside of the consideration of the violence, 
fraud, opposition and cheats employed in the contraction of the 
debt. 

We are not bound in honor to pay this debt. It was contrac- 
ted without our consent. 

The Congress was elected under the combinations of force, fraud 
and corruptions ; legislated under the duress imposed by the bay- 
onets held by arbitrary power over Congress and Legislatures ; and 
the Congress thus assuming to' legislate for the country had no 
constitutional existence. 

Then there is tlie court of last resort, before whom all these 



GENERAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 9 

questions are to be hereafter tried — the popular will. I need not 
predict the result of the issue. Such cases have been tried before 
the same tribunal. 

No such debt ever has been paid ; no such debt can be paid ; 
no such debt ought to be paid ; no such debt will be paid. 

The Jewish year of jubilee was a year of repudiation, divinely 
appointied for that purpose. 

The authors of our system, the purest lights in the constella- 
tions of Liberty, never redeemed their Continental money. 

But, overlooking the other repudiations of the world, the party 
in power is a party of repudiation. 

It repudiated the Constitution of the United States, substituting 
in its stead edicts, military commissions and proclamations. 

It repudiated, by positive legislation, the debts due to innocent 
third persons, corporations and trusts in the Southern States. 

It repudiated the obligations of servitude, as established by 
law, between the blacks and whites. 

The General Government is now officially engaged in the lowest 
and most dishonorable form of repudiation, by shaving its own 
paper in the money used. The gold is the only Constitutional 
form of money for that purpose ; and after carrying on a legisla- 
tion which is resolvable into no other general principle than that 
of repudiation, the ballot-box, never in love with monopolies, will 
master repudiation. 

The bondholders are provoking repudiation. 

First — By refusing to submit their bonds to taxation. 

Second — By making their bonds an instrument of double 
monopoly, by using them as the capital in banking as well as 
drawing interest upon their face. 

Repudiation offers the only hope of relief to the country. 

First — It takes the corrugating influence of money out of leris- 
lation. 

Second — It rids the country of the whole plague and curse of 



10 GENERAL RExVSOXS FOR PUBLICATION. 

assessors' clerks, collectors, spies, pimps, stamps, tariff, excises and 
excisemen that now enslave ns. 

It equalizes the general burdens of the war. The poor men 
gave their lives in battle. This demands that the rich, who grew 
fat on blood, shall surrender the plunder of war, to save the poor 
who fought in battle from being further ground by direct and in- 
direct taxation. 

Repudiation is a fitting conclusion to a war which has destroyed 
every thing, and now justly concludes by destroying the destroyer. 

I urge no repudiation ; I ask no action. This condition of 
things is slowly but surely coming, like the cloud about the size 
of a man's hand. It is gathering in the West — the people are 
pinched for money. 

This book has been written with a view to public relief and to 
inspire the laboring people with courage to defend their rights by 
the adoption of some plan in harmony with those great laws of 
nature and of God, which are as unchangeable as his Being. The 
laws of intelligence, wdiich govern the intercourse and determine 
the relative position of rational creatures in society ; the laws of 
superiority, which inspire command, and of inferiority, which 
yield obedience; the laws of commerce, Avhich supply and stimu- 
late trade ; the laws of finance, which require that the money of 
the country shall have free circulation from the centres to the far- 
thest extremities of business, mutually strengthening instead of 
devouring and destroying each other ; the laws of Capital and 
Labor, as they reciprocally help each other in the development of 
the wealth and power of the country, and combine to augment 
the prosperity and happiness of the people. These immutable 
laws are coeval and must be coexistent with civilized society, and 
no mere popular clamor or numerical test of a frenzied multitude, 
under the fraudulent guidance of unscrupulous leaders, can change 
one iota of their value or diminish a particle of their strength. 

AVe must now meet the great issues involved in the terrible 



PERSONAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 11 

struggle for the supremacy of law over auareliy, of republican 
government over arbitrary power. 

Let us then meet them as true men meet an unscrupulous ene- 
my. Let us hasten to the conflict, for conflict will give us victory. 



2d. personal. 

To the American People : 

I have a personal reason for the publication of this book. I 
suffered under the reign of j\Ir. Lincoln, which was a vibration 
between anarchy and despotism. AVhy arrested ? I cannot tell. 
Have never seen anything like charges, and suppose there Avere 
none in such form as would be recognized in any court of justice 
under the sun ; and yet I am quite sure there was a cause for it, 
which is this: I am a Democrat; a devoted friend of the Con- 
stitution of the United States; a sincere lover of the Government 
and the Union of the States; am anxious for a reunion, and be- 
lieve it the right and duty of a freeman, in a calm, candid man- 
ner, to discuss in a temperate spirit, the best modes of effecting 
this purpose. I have dared to jjarticipate in these discussions • 
freely, which I have done from convictions of duty. This loas the 
cause of my arrest. For months previous, I thought I saw the 
seed of contention and civil war scattered in every neighborhood 
in the Upper Mississippi Valley. Such a soil seemed prepared 
and ready to receive it, just such a soil as forces up noxious 
weeds of the rankest growth. The season was adapted to and 
beyond all description fruitful for the growth of just such plants 
as the stramonium, the poison mushroom, and the deadly night- 
shade. Weak, wicked men were stirring up strife as a daily avo- 
cation ; thirsting for blood ; listening with a morbid anxiety for 
the news ; retailing with insane satisfaction the details of some 
murder, some heart-rending catastrophe, revolting outrage upon 



1^ PERSONAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 

female purity, or savage slaughter of innocent children. They 
had learned themselves and were teachins: others to laugh at the 
conflagration which laid cities in ashes. They felt that nothing 
had been well done where the black visage of war had not gone, 
or the track of the bloody foot of desolation had not been well 
imprinted. Fury seemed to have become a virtue among those 
who should have been most calm. Violence was the watchword 
of those whose vocation was to teach meekness as a law of life, 
and love as the only preparation for the world to come. 

Ministers of the Gospel of Peace were teaching such lessons of 
cruelty, in such a spirit of violence, and in such language of intol- 
erant malice, as made the ordinary mind, yet retaining self con- 
trol, grow sick. Judges of Courts, whose duty it was to keep the 
peace, in open defiance of the obligations of their oaths of office, 
in contempt of the long established conservative character of the 
honorable profession in which they vfcre educated, and to the great 
scandal of their ermine, went into the rural districts during the 
current session of their Courts, and delivered harangues, appeal- 
ing to the basest passions of human nature, encouraging crimes 
most obnoxious to the laws of the country, and indulffino; in Ian- 
guage well calculated to light the whole land in a blaze of furious, 
endless, lawlessness and civil war. Conservative, quiet, law 
abiding men of eminence and character in the country, requested 
me by urgent letters to address the people, and assist them to 
avert the coming evil among us. With reluctance I entered upon 
the unthankful task, and commenced an humble argument to the • 
people, urging them to obey the laws, honor the Government, 
recognize the existing state of things, and above all to preserve the 
peace inviolate. This I did in an earnest, Idnd feeling, that aston- 
ished even the Revolutionists, and left them vibrating between 
personal malice and silent disappointment. I soon learned, some- 
what authoritatively, in their own choice language, that I " would 
be suppressed," my " career would be shortened," &c., &c. In 



PEESJXAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 13 

response to tins purpose, partisan radical papers began to teem 
"with epithets opprobrious and scandalous, stating groundless, ma- 
licious and inflammatory falsehoods, personal and political. To 
these attacks I gave no attention, but still pursued the quiet, even 
tenor of my way, persuading the people to stand firm by the Con- 
stitution, to obey the laws, to provoke no violence and be guilty 
of no outbreak. 

Wherever I spoke I found that underneath all the party bit- 
terness and strife, wliich was but momentary, there was a boiling 
flood of good feeling, as pure as the waters that gush from be- 
neath the Alpine mountains of perpetiftil snow. The masses of 
the people still loved each other, but were misled until their pas- 
sions were hot as the burning sand, and explosive as powder. 
When I spoke of renewing old associations, reviving Chris- 
tian fellowship, cultivating brotherly love, cheering smiles would 
play upon their faces, wild huzzas of good feeling would break 
forth from their manly lips, and tears would sometimes drive 
each other down their sunburnt cheeks as they prayed the sweet 
spirit of friendship to return ; the Angel of Mercy to banish the 
Angel of Death ; and the Genius of Christianity to again assert 
her supreme sovereignty over our society, over our divided, dis- 
tracted, and well nigh ruined country. 

Encouraged by the feelings of the people responding to my 
own, I sj)oke. Aroused by this motive alone, I addi-essed the 
great crowd that listened to me. 

This is my only offence, clearly and elaborately stated. But 
all this availed me nothing so long as I was a Democrat, a faitli- 
ful supporter of the Constitution, and an ardent lover of the 
Union, and believed and thought tliat the integrity of the one 
was the only conservative power of the other. 



14 PERSONAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 



THE TLME, THE PLACE, THE MANNER OF MY ARREST. 

I was on ray way from Quincy, Illinois, to Keosauqna, Iowa, 
to attend a meeting of the Democratic party. Mobocracy had 
run riot in Keoknk for many months under the auspices of the 
officers commanding the post, and having in charge the Medical 
Department. I had to pass through Keokuk to reach the cars. 
Before I landed at the wharf, I learned that the " Gate Ciiy" 
the only paper published in Keokuk, had demanded my arrest. 
Nearly every Puritan paper in the State had joined in the gen- 
eral howl. The tone of the press reminded me of the bulletins 
issued in the dark alleys of Paris, or the hand-bills posted on the 
front of the buildings early on each morning, containing the death 
warrant of some intended victim of assassination in the most 
terrible days of the French Revolution. The requisition of the 
paper was but the foreshadowing of the intention of the malig- 
nant citizens of Keokuk. All the details of the arrest are not 
proper for the public eye. 

I had often heard an old Indian describe the ceremony of 
running the gauntlet by prisoners of war. The naked, brawny, 
cowardly savage painted his cheeks red with blood-root, and 
blackened liis teeth with soot and charcoal. He made his trem- 
bling victim shrink as he applied the excrutiating lash, to his 
uncovered person. An old backwoodsman, now no more, who 
knew Simon Girty well, once told me how that monster had as- 
sisted the Indians to burn poor Col. Crawford at the stake. 
Girty would laugh, and grin, and taunt his victim, as the flames 
were gathering around him. He would then again break out 
into a hollow, fiendish chuckle when the blaze was shrieking 
with horror in the air. The perverted culture of civilization 
contribute^! its force to add to the brutal barbarity of the merci- 
less heathens. In my own arrest I had the most vivid picture 



PERSONAL KEASONS FOll PUiiLTCATiOX. 15 

of just such nieu leading a furious hody of a thousand persons 
in a mob. 

My arrest had been agreed upon as soon as my name was regis- 
tered at the Billings House. I could see the Puritans and 
Roundheads gathering in squads of four or five, talking in a low 
excited whisper. The fiendish smile was playing on their cheek ; 
the self satisfied smirk on the lip, and thirst for vengeance was 
pictured on their countenances. These small gatherings of men 
embraced the shouting Methodist and witch-burning Puritan, the 
Universalist and Unitarian, with every intervening class of Fa- 
natics. I was then and am now unconscious of having ever 
wronged or justly incurred the ill will of any human being in 
the city, from any cause whatever. I called to see Hon. T. W. 
Clagett on business, and whilst sitting upon the porch with the 
Judge, I saw a crowd approaching near his gate, who inquired 
for me, calling out my name. I did not, of course, call in ques- 
tion their authority, for these reasons : 

First, Every soldier is under a most solemn oath ; a very 
severe penalty to obey the articles of war, which forbid anything 
like the semblance of a mob. 

Second, Every officer is held responsible for the discipline and 
conduct of his soldiers, and whenever they engage in a mob, the 
officers are either corrupt or imbecile. 

Third, A young man of the name of Ball, whilst in the office 
of the Provost Marshal, informed me, with the grin and very 
much the tone of a Sioux Indian, that he " wanted the boys to 
take their satisfiiction out of me," and that he now arrested me 
in due fi)rm, and handed me over to the Sergeant of the Provost 
Guard. I have made this fact plain, because these men, having 
committed an atrocious crime, would well rid themselves of it 
by any subterfuge. 

After my arrest, I was placed in the front of the crowd, with 
a low-bred, insolent man, who commenced asking me offiinsive 



16 PERSONAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 

questions, of which I of course took no notice. After hurrying 
me through several streets, at length a hollow square was formed, 
where I Avas taunted, threatened and insulted for a full half 
hour. I was first informed that death was entirely too mild a 
punishment to be administered to a " Copperhead," who, in the 
choice language of their newspaper, was foolhardy and demented 
enough to venture through Keokuk. 

The soldiers were all strangers to me, and were led on and 
prompted to their action by a Puritan clique who had an unset- 
tled account with me for some very candid talk about the year 
1860, when I was a candidate for Elector of the State at large 
on the Democratic ticket, headed by tlie name of Judge Douglas. 
These benevolent men thought Nature at fault, that she had not 
endowed me with at least four separate and distinct lives, that 
each. of them might be entirely gratified in having me put to 
death in his own choice way. On the outside of the crowd there 
stood a merchant of thin visage, sharp nose, red head, and ex- 
ceedingly thin lips, who cried out at the top of his voice, " He 
ought to be drowned, seeing the Mississippi so close at hand," 
when there went up a yell, " droivn him," "drown hoi," 
" DROWN HIM." Near by another of the malignants spoke 
up and said, " DroAvning was entirely too easy and speedy a death 
for a Copperhead," and cried out, " hang him," " hang him," 
"HANG HIM." Still another commenced, and the cry went 
up ''shoot him," "shoot him," "SHOOT HIM." 

' A fourth, with the murderous laugh of a Pawnee, said burn- 
ing would better measure out the allotted punishment, — length- 
en the scene of enjoyment, and minister more thoroughly to the 
gratification of the executioners. This gentleman found no 
response. Every manner of insult and opprobrious epithet was 
used to jeer, mortify and offend. 

After being thus brutally treated, I addressed the crowd for a 
few moments, and informed them that I had been sick for nearly 



PERSONAL EEASOXS FOR PUBLICATION. 17 

a week, was then taking medicine, and desired a place to be at 
rest. After much parleying, Avhooping, yelling and coarse insult, 
I was marched down to the office of the Provost Marshal, and 
there commanded by this young man, Ball, to strip myself stark 
naked, which I had to do in the presence of a large crowed, and 
remaining in that condition for fifteen minutes, whilst my clothes 
were searched, and each one of the party had taken his full lib- 
erty in about the same kind of jesting that had occurred in the 
street, except that it was coarser and baser in the room. I told 
this young man. Ball, that I had understood that he was an offi- 
cer, educated at "West Point, from which I inferred that he was 
a gentleman. He informed me, however, not to my surprise, 
that he was not a West Pointer, which I placed to the lasting 
credit of that institution. After I had been allowed to put on 
my clothes, my carpet sack was sent for to the hotel, carefully 
searched, and my private letters and papers read aloud in the 
presence of the crowd, open to the inspection of everybody. 

After all this was over, Mr. Ball sent some one of the crowd 
to inform the soldiers that he would assure them that I would 
be severely dealt with, and they were permitted to retire. I was 
soon lodged in the Guard House, where there was neither chair, 
stool, table nor stand. Sergeant Newport kindly furnished me 
a cot. One filthy towel was the wij^ing cloth of a large body of 
men, some with diseased, sore and scrofulous eyes. I cannot 
better describe the place than I have done in a brief sketch which 
I wrote whilst there, and which Sergeant Newport, in the pres- 
ence of John H. Craig, Esq., and Judge Trimble, declared was 
true to life, and I take here great pleasure in stating that Ser- 
geant Newport, as well as every soldier of the Provost Guard, 
treated me with civility, courtesy and respect, for which I am 
grateful. 



18 PEESONAL EEASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 



THE GUARD HOUSE. 

I was informed upon my first entrance into the place, that the 
central idea of a military prison was to make it as nearly the 
very essence of hell as was possible. In this they made a capi- 
tal success. The room was about sixteen feet wide by forty-five 
feet long, with enough taken off of the side to make room for a 
fliglit of stairs. In this room there were fifty men lying side by 
side. They were of almost every conceivable grade, gathered 
from every rank in society, and charged with every manner of 
offence known to the laws of God and man. Some of them, even 
in sickness, lawless and ungovernable, had been sent in from the 
hospital, breathing the deadly malaria of all the diseases generated 
by the vices of the army. The stench of venereal taint issuing 
from their putrid breath, would nauseate the stomach of the 
oldest Bacchanalian. Another squad that contributed to the 
more dense population of this semi-infernal chamber, which was 
elevated to the third story of a dilapidated store-house in the 
rugged suburbs of a dilapidated river town, was a squad of con- 
valescent soldiers who had been sent up for mobbing a quiet 
country gentleman to avenge the malice of a drunken Cyprian. 

In this place there were bushwhackers fresh from the charcoal 
fields of the guerrilla bands of Missouri, who had stood like hun- 
gry hyenas over the dying innocent victims of their rapacity and 
lust. On the floor at the farther end of the room lay a gano- of 
rowdies, who were snatched up for infesting a low brothel in the 
purlieus of the city. Very near them was a group of reckless 
Rounders, reeking with drugged liquors, infuriated with madness, 
belching forth oaths, and howling obscene songs, compared witli 
which the jovial scenes of Billingsgate and Fish Market are chaste 
and. modest. This body of ruffians were placed for safe keeping 
in the truard House until the whisky had died out on their brain 
and its putrid fumes began to poison the atmosphere for a full 



PEESONAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 19 

city block in every direction around. Intermingled witli the 
others were deserters, escaping the hardships and duties of the 
armies, together with rebel prisoners arrested on their way back 
to take up arms against the Government. These two classes of 
gentlemen were holding a philosophical argument, discussing the 
especial merits of their respective armies. There were here con- 
fined men who had committed rape, horse thieves, watch thieves, 
murderers, and traitors, in a common nest huddled together. To 
add to the interest of this society, every evening the Patrol Guard 
would gather up the beastly drunk and tumble them in. 

At about 9 o'clock at night the roll was called, and those most 
able-bodied and desperate were locked in chains, two together. 
Then the whole crowd would l^reak out in one long, continued 
hideous yell, compared with which the howls of a gang of half 
starved prairie wolves is musical and melodious. To add to the 
attractions of this new habitation, tobacco spittle, the expectora- 
tion of lungs half rotten with Consumption, the contents of 
Catarrh nostrils, with the spontaneous relief given by nature to 
drunken men, were indiscriminately scattered over the floor, 
whilst every stitch of clothes was literally filled with vermin : 
And this was the prison into which a free American citizen was 
placed for daring to be a Democrat. 

For fourteen long and loathesome dreary days and nights, fe- 
verish with loss of sleep and gasping for breath, I was confined 
in this nameless place. Sometimes I would go to the window 
for a draught of pure air, only to catch the flood of dust that 
swept through the streets, and was breathed into my nostrils 
until my lungs became so suffused that I could scarcely inhale or 
exhale the air, and my tongue became so enlarged at the palate 
that I could with difficulty swallow my food. The prisoners ate 
after the soldier, and complained very much of their food. I re- 
ceived mv meals regularly from Mrs. Reddington, a kind-hearted 
Democratic lady of great intelligence and worth, whom even 
mobs could not deter from doing her duty. 



20 PERSONAL REASOXS FOR PUBLICATION. 

Through the day the prisoners, to give exercise to their limbs, 
would romp and play like wild horses, until the building Avould 
tremble at its base. The long loss of rest made me faint on each 
returning evening for the quiet of two o'clock till four in the 
morning, which promised the only quiet which could be enjoyed, 
even for sleep, in this pandemonium. All this I patiently en- 
dured for the sake of the truth. 

HOW I EMPLOYED MYSELF. 

These prisoners treated me kindly and respectfully underneath 
all their infirmities and misfortunes. "With many of these poor 
fellows there was a great fountain of the pure milk of human kind- 
ness still flowing, and a tender sensibility, which, when touched, 
would break forth in tears, or in tones of subdued affection, for 
home, and family, and God. I duly recognized their sympathy, 
and addressed myself to its relief, and spent my time in writing 
letters for unfortunate husbands to their Avives Avho were left in 
cabins without food or raiment, except as it was earned by moth- 
ers at the wash-tub or in the broiling sun. Children wrote to 
their disconsolate parents trembling on the verge of the grave. 
A v/ild frolicksome fellow who had grown sad, talked to me of 
his blackeyed Mary of the frontier, her playful eye, her sweet 
voice and, and the last pledge of love he had made to her before 
leavino- for the wars. When he spoke, ever and anon a tear 
would sparkle in his eye, and the innocence of childhood arise in 
his countenance, checked for a moment by his unfortunate con- 
dition, as the floating clouds obscure the light in its passage over 
the sun. There v/ere other poor fellows arraigned for grave 
offences against God and liberty, law and order, whose cases I 
assisted to prepare for court. There was no amusement other 
than the place itself. Our only theatrical enjoyment was the 
outbursts of fine Irish wit entirely refreshed by such whiskey as 
would never have found a place in Ireland. 



PERSONAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 21 

This place had a Chaplain, of whom the prisoners knew just 
nothing at all ; as innocent of human nature and its wants as an 
Enfrlishman's mastiff is of the common law of the land. He 
never spoke to the prisoners of their real spiritual wants, or 
assisted them in making their condition happier. Yet I am told, 
and upon this subject have no doubt, that he drew his salary 
regularly. I left the place with many kind feelings for the in- 
mates. I tried to impress each of them with the conviction that 
whilst any man may be a prisoner, the prisoner should not forget 
that he is still a man. 

Weighing two hundred and thirty pounds, suffocation had well 
nigh exhausted my strength. At the end of fourteen days, my 
wife, who is a lady of feeble health and was sick, stopped at the 
Billings House. I obtained a parole of honor, to be confined to 
that hotel, where I had permission to remain. During this time 
the United States Circuit Court was in session in Des Moines, 
for the purpose of finding indictments. Indictments were found 
against men for various offences. Any kind of indictment would 
have been a relief to the Puritan persecutors who were hunting 
me down. The whole country was raked, scraped, canvassed 
and scoured by spies, pimps, eaves-droppers, and common in- 
formers in the genuine spirit of Titus Gates. Every effort was 
used — personal spite, political malice, private conversation, news- 
paper scraps, written speeches, political associations, and party an- 
tecedents, were all thoroughly examined for treason, sedition, or 
anything which would disparage my love of country or prove my 
sympathies with its enemies. But no indictment could be found 
in a good season for indictments, when one was needed to cover 
up the wrongs committed against laAV, order and decency by my 
assailants. 

It was unfortunate for the safety of the country that my own 
is not the only instance of wrong suffered, nor this the only act 
of violence done in the city of Keokuk. They have been fre- 
quent and outrageous. 



22 PERSONAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 

The Constitution newspaper office was destroyed. Mr. Hook- 
er's store was destroyed in the same way. The private dwellings 
of a number of Democrats were assailed in the dead hour of 
night by the same persons. Houses were ransacked in the same 
way ; and a note was sent by this young man, Ball, to an ofiicer, 
not to attack a private family until the husband returned. 

Xow, the time has come when it is the duty of the country to 
enquire who is to blame in this matter. The soldiers are but par- 
tially accountable. The officers in command are first in fault. 
A disciplined army, of all other organizations, is not a mob. It 
cannot be, whether led by officers or carried on by privates. A 
mob is mutiny, and mutiny is punishable with death. But the 
very object of an army is to keep down mobs of every kind, and 
if the army turns mob, then there is nothing left but an anarchy 
Aviiich endangers everybody and everything. This is especially 
true where the military is supremely above the civil authority. 
And the officer who engages in this conduct is an outlaw, a pirate, 
and an assassin. 

Keokuk is the residence of Hon. Samuel F. Miller, Judge of 
the Supreme Court of the United States. He might, by his 
word, have stojjped these things at any moment. I can conceive 
how the public mind would have been startled to hear John Mar- 
shall deliver a harangue to a mob in the Public Square of Kich- 
mond, at three o'clock on the holy Sabbath morning, after it had 
assailed the private dwellings, and destroyed the private property 
of his distinguished, peaceable, law-abiding neighbors. Who 
would have believed such a thing possible of llobert Grier, or 
Henry Baldwin of Pittsburgh, of Joseph Story, or Judge Curtis 
in Boston, or Koger B. Taney in Baltimore ? This is not written 
in malice. Judge INIiller is comparatively a young man, and this 
gentle hint may arouse his ambition to make himself worthy of 
the high place he fills. It is just such men as he is that are held 
responsible to God and the country. 



PERSONAL EEASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 23 

I had not been in the guard house seventy hours for exercising 
the right of free speech, until Gov. Kirkwood, Congressman Wil- 
son, and Adjutant General Baker, were posted to speak within 
hearing where I was guarded, and Mr. Wilson endeavored to 
convince the people that all arbitrary arrests were right, and were 
not of sufficient frequency. It is these passionate harangues that 
demoralized the army, and by a strict and flxir construction of 
military law, these men are mutineers; and so long as it is done 
there can be no safety to life, liberty, or property. This much I 
have said in regard to the authors of my arrest. 

I have thus written, that the public may know the facts. I 
shall exaggerate nothing, and write nothing in bad feeling. I 
make no appeal for sympathy, and have no ambition for martyr- 
dom. I have simply performed a duty to my countrymen. You 
see what may, with the utmost impunity, be done to an Ameri- 
can citizen. I was in danger at any time from assassination from 
that class of citizens who incite all tlie mobs. One brave soldier 
told me during my confinement, that a citizen of Keokuk had of- 
fered him one hundred dollars if he would assassinate me ; and 
told the soldier that the crime need never be known ; that if ar- 
rested he would be acquitted at once ; that he might charge me 
with running guard. The same class of citizens spoke of my 
assassination in the bar-rooms and elsewhere. Every personal 
acquaintance among the soldiers, sick, well, and convalescent, 
treated me with kindness. Every demonstration against any one 
was instigated by the malignant citizens and the imbecile and cor- 
rupt officers. This was a part of the machinery for making war 
on the Copperheads of the North. 

GEN. J. M. HIATT, 

The Provost Marshal, was exceedingly tenacious of liis rights 
and duties as an officer, and showed no disposition to favor or 
screen me from any charge which any testimony might in any- 



24 PERSONAL REASONS FOR PUBLICATION. 

wise justify or fasten upon me. It is just to liim, however, to 
say, that at the time of my arrest he was not at home, and was in 
no wise a party to the personal insults offered me, but has treated 
me with civility. 

I was UNCONDITIONALLY released, more firmly than ever con- 
vinced that the Democratic party should remain united as the 
only hope of the country. 

From the eifects of this imprisonment I yet suffer. 



Crimes of the Civil "War. 



Booic :pii^;St. 



CHAPTER I. 

Destruction of Self-Government. 

Society Is composed of individuals. The rights and powers 
of society are the aggregate rights and powers of the individuals 
that compose it. They can be neither more or less, any more than 
the whole can be more or less than its parts. Society may not do 
anything which would be criminal in the individual ; for the same 
moral laws which govern the individual are carried with him 
into the social compact. Every man has a right to govern him- 
self, subject only to the laws of his being. 

The rights and powers of self-government in society are derived 
from its individual members who have transferred them to the 
whole for the benefit and protection of all, and the more perfect 
security of each. 

The individual could not transfer more than he possessed nor 
society receive more than he transferred. 

All claims to absolute powers in government or arbitrary 
Powers in the individual are absurd, all transfers of rights and 
Powers to society by the individual are subject to the supreme 
laws of the universe to which all men are responsible. 

Government is a contract entered into among a people. It is 
of men purely, and cannot be of more binding force than other 
contracts made in good faith for just purposes involving equal 
interests. The rights which governments are made to protect are 
divine — inherent. The powers which governments exercise are 



26 CEIMES OP THE CIVIL WAE. 

purely human — derivative, dependent upon the will of the people 
who are governed. Man has power to govern himself. More- 
over, he has no earthly guardian of greater capacity than himself. 
Self-government then, is not only a right, but a necessity. Man 
has all of the rights with all of the powers of self-government 
and self-defence, for the same reasons. 

All men are capable of self-government, and are the sole judges 
of its substance, form and details. This is true of the most ignor- 
ant and barbarous nations. It is not a good argument against 
this doctrine that since the government of one people is not as 
good as that of another, therefore the people are not capable of 
self-government whose system is inferior. It is a sufficient 
answer that they are satisfied with their system, and others have 
neither right nor interest in the premises. For example, the 
government of the Xortli American Indians would not satisfy 
either the desires or ambition of the people of Paris, New York 
or London. Yet it is a far better government for them than that 
of any of those cities or their respective countries. 

There can be no better evidence of this than the fact that it is 
impossible to persuade these savages to surrender their systems 
for any other. 

Every government is the photograph of the Mill and capacity 
of the people with whom it originates. 

What are called improvements in government, no more repre- 
sent the real wants of all people than the portrait of a Caucassian 
belle represents the naked squaw or half-dressed negro wench. 
A violation of this law leads to endless mischief. 

Again, I cite the Indians who have systems of government and 
religion adapted to themselves, but not to civilized nations. 
Civilized nations have therefore foolishly, nay wickedly, — elated 
with the superiority of their own institutions, framed by the 
architectural skill of centuries and happily adjusted to every con- 
ceivable necessity of polished society, — attempted to force them 
upon uncultivated savages, Mdio have nothing in common with 
them ; and for the enjoyment of which nature has given them 
no capacity. Therefore every attempt at projjagandism among 
the Indians has been not only a failure, but a positive injury 
and atrocious crime against nature, who has the greatest capa- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 27 

citv and most happy flicility for the government of her own 
chikb'en. 

God has provided for the Indian a system of government. He 
worships a being beyond his comprehension, yet assimilated to 
himself. His worship has been carefully systematized by his 
ancestors, and is perfectly in itself, adapted to his nature, if not to 
his Avants. The Indian was not made for the civilization peculiar 
to the white man. It was a crime to attempt to bestow it upon 
him with force. The details of the religion and political system 
of the white race could not be taught to the Indian by persuasion ; 
nor could it be imposed upon him by any combination of force 
through the agencies of missionaries, courts or armies. Yet the 
Indian is capable of self-government, and has a right to govern 
himself in his own way. 

There is a very great difference in the degree of the cultiva- 
tion, refinement, and manner of life of different families of the 
same race and nation, yet the right of each family to live under 
its own lawful government is unquestionable; and it must be ad- 
mitted that this very difference in family government makes it 
necessary that each family does govern itself in its own way. 
What is true of the family must be true of the nation; the same 
principles of right, propriety and law apply in like manner to 
each and cannot be changed without violence to all. In the en- 
joyment of the right of self-government, the title of every people 
is inalienable and supreme. 

These rights can be destroyed only by destroying the commu- 
nities which have inherited them. 

To destroy communities for the enjoyment of their inherent 
rights, is a crime of nameless atrocity. To kill a people in the 
defence of their inalienable rights is murder, to burn their prop- 
erty is arson, to carry it off is robbery, to break open their houses 
is burglary. 

Burning up mills, barns and stack-yards, laying plantations 
waste to starve innocent women, helpless children, and defen(?eless 
age, is crime in its most revolting form — a shameful retreat from 
civilization to barbarism, from which there is no safe return. 

Whatever may be the plausible pretext for the savage cruelty 
of desolating campaigns, the whole force of suffering falls upon 



28 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

the old men tottering over the grave, the sick wlio are nnable to 
provide for themselves, the half lame, blind, deaf and dumb — 
the women whom old age and the infirmities of the sex have dis- 
abled from flight, and children who have neither disposition, intelli- 
gence or strength to leave their homes. Such are the victims of 
these crimes against civilization. 

The soldier in arms who fights will fly from the desolate 
countries overrun with this barbarism, and seek refuge where 
plenty abounds. When their own can no longer sustain them, 
the soldiers will invade the country whence supplies are drawn, 
and re-enact in retaliation the horrid crimes which have lain their 
own country in ashes. With the recollection of destitute parents, 
the piteous cries of heart-broken children, the screams of ravished 
wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters, echo in their ears and incite 
them to revenge. 

As the sight of their burning homes and ruined families arouse 
them to wild desperation, they leap like wounded tigers into the 
conflict, unconscious of danger and fearless of death. 

The burning of raannfhctories falls entirely upon the helpless, 
who, unable to obtain by industry or reprisal what they have lost, 
through their inability to protect themselves against the invasion 
and rapine of military force. How inexcusable is the destruction 
of that property which God has kindly given us to preserve and 
minister to our comfort. 

The orchard and vineyard ought not to be disturbed nor the 
water coiu'se changed from its bed, nor springs nor wells be pois- 
oned. These are the common property of the good and the evil 
upon whom the sun shines, the just and the unjust, upon whom 
the rain descends. 

No law can justify nor can any language apologize for these 
crimes against a people^ struggling to maintain the right of self- 
government. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 29 



CHAPTER II. 

The Destruction of Civilization by Mongrelism. 

The earliest governments originated in the family, and were 
patriarchal. 

Nations were amplifications of the family and maintained 
their identity with their integrity, by refusing to amalgamate 
with other nations. 

Jacob refused Dinah to her ravisher, and not only did not al- 
low him to marry into the family, but his sons slew him. 

The Ammonites and the Moabites were not allowed to enter 
into the congregation of the Lord. 

Leo-itimate governments include nationalitieSj but not diifer- 
ent peoples ; and must be adapted to the character of the gov- 
erned. 

Different and unequal races cannot live happily or safely un- 
der the same government, upon an equality. 

1. This was never attempted before its introduction into 
South America, Mexico and the West India Islands, and is 
there an exemplification of all the cruelties of barbarism, di- 
rected by all of the shrewd villainies of civilization. 

2. It is unjust and absurd that people, who require entirely 
different systems, should be subjected to the same form and de- 
tails of government. 

By this unnatural means the more elevated are degraded by 
leo-al association ; whilst the more degraded cannot be elevated 
by laws above their moral condition and mental capacity. 

When such an unnatural condition of things may happen, 
still the people must be governed to give them protection and 
security. 

It is then the duty of the superior race in the spirit of jus- 
tice, to assume guardianship over the inferior race, and control 



30 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

it by such parental regulations as are adapted to its degraded 
condition. 

Such were the systems of the two great statesmen of the 
world, Moses of ancient, and Jefferson of modern times. 

Moses reduced the Canaanites to chattel slavery, to secure 
tlieir subservience to the Jewish people. The law-makers un- 
der the system of Jefferson, having the more difficult task of 
dealing with three distinct and entirely different races, removed, 
the Indians from among the whites, and subjected tlic negroes 
to personal servitude, which in some form or other must exist 
whilst the races remain in contact, or live in close proximity. 
When this cannot be done, either through the rebellion of the 
inferior, or the folly of the superior race, then degradation and 
anarchy bring both races prostrate together. 

The remedy for this last condition of things is the removal 
of the inferior from among the superior, if it be possible. This 
was the plan adopted for the relief of the Israelites in their 
subjection to the Egyptians — and offers the only ray of hope for 
the final preservation of American society, and tlie ultimate re- 
lief of the blacks of America from annihilation. 

Tlie negro race is tractable and capable of a superficial and 
limited improvement; but herein lies the difficulty that they 
have no capacity for the perpetuity of knowledge or the im- 
provement of their offspring. An elephant may be taught the 
performance of the most extraordinary feats, but cannot teach 
them to its young ; so may the negro receive knowledge from the 
white man, but will not impart it to his children. Their normal 
condition can no more be permanently changed than can their 
climates with its fruit and soil. 

The peaceful servitude of the blacks of the United States has 
ended in civil war. Every Christian sentiment revolts at a war of 
races in which the negro must disappear in universal bloodshed. 

The emigration of the negro from the United States to Africa 
or elsewhere, is his last refuge of hope. This must be accom- 
plished to save both the negroes and the whites from mutual 
dccn-adation or mutual destruction. Against this it is argued 
that the negroes were born here, and ought not therefore to be 
removed or forced to emigrate. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 31 

But we may urge that the Israelites, through forty years' 
march, left Egypt and emigrated to Canaan to secure their free- 
dom and enjoy their homes and the land of their fathers. 

That we have removed the Indians from the Atlantic off of 
their own lands to the farthest verge of the continent, to secure 
a peaceful separation of the races. 

The French of South Carolina, the English of North Carolina, 
"Virginia, and Georgia, the Catholics of Maryland, the Dutch of 
New York and New Jersey, the Quakers of Pennsylvania and 
Delaware, the Puritans,^ of New England, the Germans, Celts, 
Sclavonians, and Scandinavians, all have come from the land of 
their birth to secure freedom. Every hotel in the cities is filled 
with white servant girls, who, for the same reason, are saving their 
weekly pittances to bring their indigent parents, brothers or sis- 
ters to America. The rapid increase of the white race in the 
United States makes emigration a necessity. Africa is the only 
division of the earth that invites emigration and enterprize in 
vain ; and the negroes the only people who can endure its climate 
or cultivate its soil. Emigration to Africa secures to the negro 
self-government. It will secure to him civilization, if he has ca- 
pacity to civilize ; and if he have, what a future for this unfor- 
tunate people to go to the land of their fathers, to cultivate the 
soil, beautify the plains, navigate the rivers, develop the wealth 
of the mountains, cultivate the rich valleys of the Niger and the 
Nile, whiten the coasts of Liberia and Guinea with fleets and 
merchantmen made of their native forests. 

They can avail themselves of the generosity of nature to their 
native land and enter the lists with Europe and America in the 
ao-ricultural staples of the world. They can unfurl the banner 
of the Holy Cross to their barbarous brethren, and behold Prin- 
ces come up out of Egypt and Ethiopia and stretch forth her hand 
to God. 

This has never yet been, but let it be, if possible. But of it be 
not possible for a race of people to assume civilization on a conti- 
nent of which they may have exclusive habitation, assisted by the 
civilized nations of the earth, then it were a crime against civil- 
ization to propose to such a people government a partnership 
with the master race, whose children in the prosecution of busi- 



32 ' CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

ness, trade and enterprize penetrate to the remotest parts of the 
earth. 

To the people of the country is committed the removal of this 
unhappy race and the prevention of the debasing crime of mongrel- 
ism, barbarism, idolatry, and the obliteration of office-government. 
The Mongolian race representing 560,000,000 of the human 
family in commercial communication with the United States, 
tempted by the gold mines of California, are pouring their emi- 
gration upon the Pacific coast and have it within their easy reach 
of power to place fifty millions of their population in the United 
States, where they will work for less wages, live on less food than 
Americans. 

Their votes can be purchased for a trifle. Their habits and 
morals are of the low, heathen type and their worship idolatrous. 
They must be excluded from the rights of suffrage to preserve 
the Pacific governments. Could any government outlive this 
elective influence? These are not only the Chinese, but they 
are drift-wood of the Chinese. The dangers of this monstrous 
Mongrel theory is transparent. It would seem superfluous to 
recite the failures, horrors, anarchies, despotisms, butcheries, cruel- 
ties, idolatries and recklessness of society consequent upon the 
Mongrel ized governments of Mexico, South America, and the 
Islands of the Atlantic. 

After having robbed the Indians of their lands, home and self- 
government, despoiled their country, corrupted their morals, 
and butchered them in their wigwams, to get rid of a degraded 
race ; it seems incredible that an intelligent people should repeat 
the experiment upon an even more degraded race than the Indian. 
This is the more remarkably when they propose the elevation of 
the negro by the degradation of the white race. 

If it did not involve the prosperity and glory of a continent, it 
were laughable to read the legislative edicts against the decrees 
of nature, the cultivation of negroes by its whites, who are inca- 
pable of self-support, and by the merest miracle are outside of 
insane asylums and schools for idiots. 

The condition of the poor negro remains unchanged ; neither 

" his color nor his imbecility have yielded to the weekly meetings 

of the o-rand Army of the Republic ; nor has the thriftless Afri- 



C 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 33 

can been fed by the millions squandered upon the revolutionary 
vai-abonds who have rioted upon the public property and destroyed 
the public peace. The black man, after elections as before it, re- 
mains as ever, the same stupid, stolid creature of circumstance, 
the victim of chicanery, which impels him to seek shelter under 
the benign protection of the white man, or perish in his ineffectual 
attempt to fight climates for which nature has left him literally 
unprepared. Nature is never defeated^ nor will she suffer in the 
present conflict. 



34 * CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



CHAPTER III. 

Invasion of Personal Rights. 

TriErvE are rights older than elections, for the protection of 
which elections are held, which they cannot destroy and dare 
not invade. Older and more sacred than constitntions, these 
rights constitnte the essential elements of our manhood ; with- 
out wliich we are mere beasts of burden to be driven by the 
whip of the master-machines, directed by external forces — idiots, 
lunatics and imbeciles, who tamely yield to the will of their 
keeper. 

These rights can be suspended only by the fiat of the Deity, 
who may hinder our speech, bewilder our understanding, sus- 
pend our powers of thought, or divest us of those sparkling 
fires of his own intelligence stamped with his image on our be- 
ing; or they may be surrendered, by our imbecility and pusil- 
lanimity, or by our crimes forfeited to society whose equal rights 
we invade. 

These rights are sacred as our person: — as the brain which 
conceives, and the heart which feeds them with its elemental 
life — are indefeasible. Neither legislatures, courts nor kings 
can justly divest us of our life, liberty, property or pursuit of 
happiness, without due process of law, or in punishment of 
crimes. 

These rights are inalienable, and may no more be sold or bar- 
tered to tyrants, than the limbs may be amputated and sold to 
the surgeon, or the living body be delivered to the dissecting 
room, for the purposes of anatomy. 

These rights are indefeasible. No claim of violence or force 
can be valid against them. 

Conquest is armed robbery ; government by conquest is usur- 
pation. 



CKIMES OF THE CIVIL AVAR. 3j 

Usurpation is the most enormous crime wliicli can be perpe- 
trated against society. It is robbery in its most offensive form. 
Otlier robbers take the property, and sutler the victim to pursue 
his regular vocation: the usurper absorbs the fountains of life 
as the sponge drinks up the water, and by one well-directed 
blow, lays prostrate the great power of a people, that he may 
enslave talent, and quench the fires of genius in their opening 
flame. He crushes out liberty with all the noblest elements of 
a great people who are forced to see through his eyes, hear Avith 
his ears, and breathe through his nostrils. Drunken with power, 
the usurper becomes more degraded than his willing victims. It 
is the trick of usurpers to confound usurpation Avith government, 
that he may conciliate resistance, and appease the law-abiding. 

Government is a contract ratified by the people. Usurpation 
is a forcible entry and detainer upon their rights of goA^ernment. 

The people of every country are under obligation to obey its 
laAVS, but are under the same obligation to resist usurpation. 

The mere violation of laAV by a criminal Avhile endangering 
the public security, need not impair its majesty, Avhich retains 
the power to enforce its mandates. 

But usurpation strikes doAvn the laAV, destroys that house of 
refuo-e, AAathout AAdiich, society is left to the Avanton inroads of 
desperate men, and the passionate violence of reckless fanatics, 
who may choose to forage upon their fields, and prey upon their 
substance. 

The ordinary laAV-breaker gratifies some morbid appetite, 
unbridles some furious passion, or indulges in some A'icious habit: 
the usurper destroys all security of the people, and becomes the 
enemy of society, Avhich is imperiled by his existence, and can 
appeal to no laAV to protect him. 

When a people haA'e good grounds to belicA'e that their rights 
will be iuA-aded under cover of the forms of laAV, and resist the 
initiatory steps of aggression, the laAvful authorities may conduct 
themselves in such a manner, as to justify the people in prosecu- 
ting a rebellion, Avhicli in the beginning AA'as unjustifiable. 

For resistance to laAV, every government has ample power to 
punish offenders; for usurpation, governments have provided 
no adequate remedy. 



36 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Usurpation is a crime which must be repelled rather than 
punished. When by common consent, any one is deemed a tyrant 
or usurper, and resists the ordinary modes of redress obtainable 
by laAv, or corrupts the fountains of justice, that the people may 
have no adequate security in the courts, then the people have an 
undoubted right to repel him as they would a thief in the night, 
a burglar at their door, or an assassin at their throat. The usur- 
per is thief, burglar and assassin combined, whose compound 
felonies against society are alike dangerous to every individual. 

This law of force is the last terrible remedy against usurpation. 

Resistance to usurpation is just. The usurper has no claims 
to the protection of law, because his powers are derived from the 
suspension of law. He holds his power by force, and cannot 
complain if force overpowers him. 

The right to dethrone tyrants and usurpers, and destroy them 
Avhen they cannot be otherwise removed, has had the sanction of 
liberal and just men of all times and countries. Brutus removed 
Csesar by bloody stealth. Although Caesar had interwoven his 
great name with Roman glory, and added new lustre and renown 
to tiie science of arms, yet, after the lapse of centuries, Brutus is 
canouizcd in history as the last immortal patriot of Rome. 

Tell slew Gesslcr, and the tyrant is indebted to his slayer for a 
place in history, which is awarded him only to perpetuate the 
memory of his just death. 

Our own Indians slay their usurpers "with grave and impos- 
ing ceremonies, as the only remedy left them to preserve their 
liberties. 

The chief heroes of history are rebels, who have resisted 
unlawful assumptions of power, such as Washington, Henry 
and JeiFerson : those who have slain the oppressors of their kins- 
men, as did Moses: those who have avenged their personal 
Avrongs in the blood of their tyrants, as Charlotte Corday, who 
slew Marat. Those people have been enbalmed in the hearts of 
Americans, and elevated to the proudest place in the liberal his- 
torv of the world, who have executed their kings for the usurp- 
ation of their rights ; and no executed felons find less sympathy 
in posterity, than is awarded to the memories of Louis of France 
and Charles of England. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. o/ 

The revolution of 177G was a terrible struggle for the main- 
tenance of personal rights, invaded by political power. 

Revolutions, or even rebellions, are never purely artificial. A 
mere irruption upon the surface of society will soon pass away 
with but slight inconvenience to communities. 

Revolution is the explosion of society from the presence of in- 
congruous elements in conflict. Revolutions cannot be causeless, 
any more than are fevers, earthquakes, volcanoes or hurricanes. 
The diseased condition of the human system amply explains the 
fever ; tlie convulsions of the earth as fairly interpret the earth- 
quake; the insatiable stomach of fire which belches forth its vol- 
umes of flaming scoriae, duly accounts for the volcano ; the collis- 
sion of the elements is the solution of the hurricane. The assump- 
tions of power, trespasses upon liberty, outrages upon rights, with 
their concomitants, corruptions in oflice, and exacting annoyances 
of petty officials ; promptly met by tenacity of self-government, 
maintenance of individuality, love of liberty, and personal rc])ose, 
are the common and legitimate causes of revolution. The ])eopIe 
never redress their wrongs too speedily, or punish the usurper too 
severely. It is the business of usurpers to concentrate power, 
employ mercenary armies, wring taxes from the people to pay 
for the usurpation of their government and crushing out liberty. 

Personal liberty is always in danger. It is the life-blood upon 
which the tigers of usurpation riot. 

The only safety is to resist every encroachment upon liberty. 
The defence of personal rights is a duty tantamount to the 
preservation of life itself. The quiet surrender of liberty is a 
crime for which cowardice can offer no satisfactory apology, an 
enormity that admits of no palliation. The crime is multii)licd 
in the father, who compromises his children in the transmission 
'of his slavery. Such is the depravity of tyrants, that failing to 
apologize for the wrongs perpetrated upon society, they imagine 
that the public intelligence has undergone the same changes that 
their crimes have wrought upon themselves, and exercise usur- 
pation as a matter of right. The questions of personal liberty 
admit of no argument, they are self-evident. 

Whenever a usurper offers a reason why a whole people 
should be robbed, burned, disfranchised, degraded and destroyed, 



38 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

and proceeds to the execution of this horrible work, the people 
have no remedy left them but the sabre and the musket. 

Against violent usurpation there is no remedy but resistance ; 
this is the law of nature which, through the mutations of time, 
has come down to us unimpaired, maintained by the most astute 
statesmen, defended by the most heroic warriors, led by the 
ablest generals, sung by the sublimest poets, in the most inspir- 
ing song; instituted by God in the liberation of Israel from 
Egypt, and approved by the just and generous sentiment of 
mankind. 

When the liberties of Rome were usurped by Casar, the 
people had no other remedy than that which brought him to the 
earth by the dagger of Brutus ; nor had the Swiss any other 
mode of vindicating their liberty against the cruelty of Gessler, 
than by the vengeful hand of Tell. 

History has never murmured against the verdict, nor de- 
murred to the jurisdiction of the bloody courts. 

Charles Stuart was not amenable to the courts of common law ; 
the maxim was imperious that the King could do no wrong, but 
that very maxim appealed his case to another court, where all 
maxims were suspended, and passion's fevered lips Avere burning 
in unquenched thirst for royal blood, and must be satiated. 

The King had no right to complain. He had first destroyed 
the law and substituted his arbitrary -will in its stead ; and when 
in his extremity, he appealed to the British constitution for pro- 
tection against violence, his remedies failed him. His own vio- 
lence had prepared the scaifold to consummate his ruin, and end 
Ills usurpation and his life together. 

Louis XVI was not the worst of all the European tyrants. 
His name was endeared to Americans as their fast and oj^portune 
friend in their infant struggle for liberty. But the sovereignty 
of Louis was an expense upon the life, liberty and property of 
ths subject — in Avars, prisons and taxation, the implements of 
tyrants in CA^ery age Avhich the enlightened people of France 
could no longer endure — and sought their only relief in his 
speedy and A'iolent death. 

It Avas not the A-ersatile pen of A'^oltaire, the KeA'olutionary 
clociuence of Mirabeau, or the pathetic appeals of Kosseau that 



CEIMES OP THE CIVIL WAE. od 

begat the French Eevolution. It was the oppression of the 
people suflered in their persons, who, after exhausting all other 
remedies, flew to arms, choosing rather to perish in glorious 
vindication of their honor and liberty than live iu perpetual 
bondage. 

It were the better way to arraign, try, and convict tyrants 
according to the forms of law, but this can never be done. 
They always cunningly prevent the possibility of legal trials, 
and defy legal responsibility. AVhat tribunal dare arraign or 
arrest Julius Ceesar ? What remedy had the people ? They 
dared not even speak of their wrongs. This was sedition. Cresar 
created and demolished courts; called and prorogued councils. 
Csesar was ruling tyrant; the people were helpless slaves. 
Brutus slew Csesar; this was the only remedy for the over- 
shadowing evil — a just j)unishment of his crime. The guilt 
of his own blood rested on the tyrant's head, which had been 
justly forfeited to mankind. 

Assassination is a hideous crime, which undermines the foun- 
dations of society, and brings the grand old temple of human 
government toppling to the earth, and makes every man seem 
prima facie the enemy of mankind. Whether the crime be 
perpetrated by ruler or citizen, king or subject, it loses none of 
its innate and ineffable horror. 

But here arises the startling question which must be carried 
before the high court of history and the great chancery of God, 
which will in passionless judgment sit upon our actions. Who 
is the assassin ? The man M-ho in frenzied madness strikes the 
fatal bloAv; or the tyrant who overthrows all government — 
destroys his own safety in his rage to torture his enemies ; or 
gratifies his spite by plunging the country into civil war and 
universal anarchy ; who regards nothing of law except its 
power to punish and inflict its penalties to satiate his malice? 

A guilty ruler imprisons legislatures, overawes courts by 
degrading its judges, and gives discretionary license to levy 
arbitrary taxes, and suspends personal rights ; invites violence and ' 
destruction from the people and invokes the judgments of God, 
which fall upon those who exalt themselves above justice and 
courts. 



40 CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 

AVhoever may not be tried for his crimes, invokes judgment 
without trial. Upon these two axioms have we built the Amer- 
can system : 

1. " That all just powers of government are derived 

FROM the consent OF THE GOVERNED." 

2. " Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." 



CHIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 41 



CHAPTER lY. 

Violation of the Rights of the States r,Y the Federal Govern^.ient. 

The war between the States of tlie Union was not a riot. 
It was deliberate, systematic and orderly, upon the part of the 
Southern States. It was not an insurrection or rebellion, every- 
thing was done in subordination to the law and sovereign power 
of the States, in which it transpired with no more of violence 
than is common to warfare. It was not a revolution. It 
changed none of the organic laws of the States, the people armed 
themselves according to law to repel a threatened invasion of 
their country, overthrow of their government and violations of 
their political, legal and social rights in which they failed, and 
are now realizing their worst anticipated fears. 

It was a war between independent States, in violation of the 
Constitution of the United States, as interpreted V)y its framcrs ; 
by the Supreme Court, its legal exponent and the statesmen 
and publicists, contemporary with its existence. 

The pretext for the war was the preservation of the Union — 
an organized Union fighting against organized States, the whole 
destroying its parts was the monstrous absurdity. 

Among equal contracting parties, rape was substituted for 
marriage, or consent was extorted by force as the sublimest 
spectacle of free government. 

This doctrine is the fruitful parent of all of the machinery of 
despotism, standing armies, taxations, corruptions and slavery. 

The rights of the States and the power of the general govern- 
ment have been in harmony from the beginning, a combination 
for protection without the right or power of destruction. 

I. The original nineteen Colonies were organized under char- 
ters and contracts from Great Britain, the very terms of which 
made them separate in their territory, in their estates, franchise 



42 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

and colonial existence; no one colony claiming co-ordinate 
jurisdiction Avitli or supremacy over the others. 

In so iar as "svas stipulated by contract, Majesty itself did not 
dare interfere with these charters. Such was the declaration of 
the Virginia Convention of 1774. 

The Colonies made their own laws, and colonists held their 
property by virtue of their inherent right. 

It may be tedious, but I trust not interesting, to present an 
epitome of the condition of the settlement of the colonies. This 
is the most prominent feature of the whole colonization of the 
American settlement. That they held their rights by contract 
with the parent Government, and the franchises which they re- 
ceive w^ere the conditions upon which they accepted their lands ; 
and these franchises were held by the same tenure, secured in 
the same instruments with their deeds for their lauds — the title 
to the one as indefeasible as the title of the other. 

The Colony of Massachusetts (then embracing the territory 
of the future States of Connecticut, New Hampshire and Ehode 
Island ) was settled under compacts of the emigrants of Novem- 
ber 3cl, 1620, chartered March 4th, 1629; also, by charter of 
January 15th, 1730, with charters explanatory and confirmatory. 

New Hamspshire when separated in a distinct colony was 
chartered, and a separate Government instituted September 
18th, 1679. 

Rhode Island governed her people under her separate charter, 
granted in July 8th, 1662, until September 1742, unchanged, the 
original charter being deemed a clear guaranty of sovereignty. 

Connecticut, withdrawing from the Government of the Colony 
of Massachusetts, instituted her Government under a separate 
charter, April 23d, 1662. 

New York, embracing the East and "West Jerseys, was gov- 
erned by charter granted March 20th, 1664, April 26tli, 1664, 
June 24th, 1664, and newly patented on February 9th, 1674. 

New Jersey was chartered March 3d, 1677, and surrendered 
the charter to the Crown in 1702. 

Pennsylvania, including Delaware in its provisions, was char- 
tered February 28th, 1681. Granted to AVilliam Penn. 

jSIavvland was chartered June 20th, 1632. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 43 

Virginia Mas chartered April lOtli, 1606, May 23cl, 1600, 
March 12th, 1612. 

Xorth Carolina, including the territory of South Carolina, 
was chartered March 20th, 1663, and June 30th, 1665. 

Soutii Carolina was separated from Korth Carolina in 1729. 

Georgia was chartered on June 9th, 1732. 

Tliis brief epitome of the character of the States and their 
original organization, is very fully explained in the declaration 
of Independence, w|iicli was the apology offered to mankind by 
these cliartcrcd and separate colonies fur resisting the authority 
of Great Britain. 

The powers of the Colonies are aptly eet forth in the same 
comprehensive paper. In the whole history of this country, 
whilst subject to law, there has never been any dispute upon this 
subject regarding the powers of the States: "AVc, therefore, 
the Eepresentatives of the United States of America, in Genercd 
Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the 
World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by 
the authority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly pub- 
lish and declare that these United Colonies are and ought of 
right to be free and independent States. * * * * 
And that as free and independent States, they have full power to 
levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, 
and do all other acts and things which independent States may 
of right do." 

By the Articles of Confederation, the true character of the 
State is set forth in terms so clear that argument or exposition is 
inaelmissible : 

" Article I. The style of this Confederacy shall he the 
United States of America. 

"Art. II. Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and in- 
dependence, and every })ower and right which is not by tliis Con- 
federation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress 
a.ssembled. 

*' Art. III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm 
league of friendship Avith each other for their common defence, 
the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general \vel- 
fare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force 
ottered to or attack made upon them, or any of them, on account 
of religion, SOVEREIGNTY, trade or any pretense whatever." 



44 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

These three articles of the second bond of Union use the very- 
words of sovereignty, independence, &c., which ignorance has 
rendered obnoxious to men whose only claim to consideration is 
their lack of knowledge of the jdainest, simplest principles of free 
government. 

Art. IX. Amendment of the Constitution of the United 
States, declares " The enumeration in the Constitution of certain 
rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained 
by the people. 

" Art. X. The powers not delegated to the United States by 
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved 
to the States respectively, or to the people." 

It is only necessary here to add that neither the sovereignty 
nor the independence of the States in any form, or by any impli- 
cation or expression was in the Constitution delegated to the 
United States, and of consequence remains Avitli the States and 
with the people. But no persons more than the Eopublican 
jmrty believe this ; indeed they concede it when they attempt to 
force amendments upon it by force, and in such manner as will 
be reprobated by any court of authority. It seems scarcely 
possible in the face of the history of our jurisprudence, and the 
decisions of the courts of the country, that these great truths 
should be doubted, and an attempt at illustrating these princi- 
ples would be the folly of attempting to paint the sunbeams. 

But the philosophy which underlies tins law is even more 
striking than the law itself. There is quite as much propriety 
in having all lands in one farm, all workshops in one building, 
all religion in one Church, or all families in one house, as to 
place all people under one Government, or all the States under 
a consolidated system. 

The people of the States are of different origin, different re- 
ligion, different manners, customs and habits, and living under 
different climates, with entirely different vocations, demanding 
different regulations. Such is this diversity that an attempt to 
destroy the inherited peculiarities of each would be justly regarded 
as legitimate grounds of revolution or Avar. 

The sovereignties of the States rest as a matter of contract 
upon the charters entered into by the original settlers. But the 
sovereignties of the new States rest upon a constitutional pro- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 45 

vision vliieli pledges that the United States shall guarantee to 
every State a republican form of government, and shall proteet 
each of them against invasion, (but certainly does not give the 
right to invade or devastate them, and thereby destroy a repub- 
lican form of government,) and on apj)lication of the Legislature, 
or of the Executive, when the Legislature cannot be convened, 
against domestic violence. 

The five new States made out of the bountiful grant of Vir- 
ginia were ceded under this contract of the Congress of the 
United States before the adoption of the Constitution. " And 
u-hencvcr any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free in- 
habitants therein, such States shall be admitted by its Delegcdes 
into the Congress of the United States on an equal footing loith 
the origincd States in cdl respects tchatever." 

In the treaty by which the Louisiana purchase was ceded to 
the Government of the United States : 

"Art. III. IVie inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be 
incoriwreded in the Union of the United States, and admitted 
as soon as possible, according to the princMes of the Federal 
Constitution, to the enjoyment of all of the rights, advantages and 
immunities of citizens of the United Stcdes, and in the meantime 
they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of 
their liberty, property, and the religion ivhich they jirofess^ — 
Treaty of 1803. 

Li the cession of the Floridas and other Spanish possessions 
to the United States, by trenty of February 22, 1819, Article 
five and six, provides that " The inhabitants of the ceded terri- 
tories shall be secured in the free exercise of their religion with- 
out any restrictions ; and all those who may desire to remove to 
the Spanish dominions, shall be permitted to sell or export their 
eifects at any time whatever, without being subject, in either 
case, to duties. — (Art. 5.) The inhabitants of the ceded terri- 
tories, which his Catholic Majesty cedes to the United States, 
by this treaty, shall be incorporated in the Union of the United 
States as soon as may be consistent with the principles of the 
Federal Constitution, and admitted to the enjoyment of all the 
privileges, rights and immunities of the United States." — 
(Art. 6.) 



46 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

The Joint Resolution by which Texas was admitted into the 
Union was of singuhar significance, as it had been an independent 
State, with which Ave had diplomatic relations, and was admitted 
in the following langnagc,. and upon the following terms, 
namely : 

"Resolved, By the Senate and House of Bepresentafiirs of the 
United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the State 
of Texas shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one of the 
States of the United States of America, and admitted into the 
Union on an equal footing with the original States, in all re- 
spects whatever." 

The treaty by which we acquired California and other jNIcxican 
Territory is of similar import, and need not be cited. The 
States made from Southern Territory, like those formed of A^ir- 
ginia Territory, had the same general rights as those ceded by 
treaties with foreign powers. 

Upon these positive compacts the people settled the new States. 
The law was the written condition of the settlement. Self-gov- 
ernment was the sine qui non of American emigration, and in- 
vited the inhabitants from every part of Europe to xYmerica. 
Ko plantation in America is held by a clearer right, or more 
definite and indefeasible title than are the sovereign powers of 
the States. 

STATES EIGHTS. 

We must abide the doctrines of the first Kentucky resolution, 
because its abondonment has cost us the loss of State Courts, 
State Legislatures, State Conventions, legitimate State remedies, 
and finally, the States themselves have fallen a prey to our sur- 
render of their sovereign powers, and only the plain and simple 
truths of that resolution, vigorously enforced by us, can offer 
to the people of the smaller and remoter States any remedy 
whatever for the evils they suifer, and the wrongs inflicted upon 
them by the larger and richer States of the seaboard. 

This resolution has not the purpose, spirit or tendency to the 
dissolution of the Union, as time and transpiring events now 
fully demonstrate. But upon the contrary, it is the high and 
holy purpose of the doctrine to preserve the Union forever, and 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 47 

extend the area of its glory — not merely by the pliysical freog- 
raphy of mountains, rivers and lakes, standing armies, tax- 
gatherers, bank monopolies and consolidated capital, but by that 
affection, interest and devotion in the States and the people 
■which is inspired by justice, equality and free government. 
The Union was not made to destroy, but to protect free govern- 
ment and all of the natural rights of the people, to which all 
government must be subservient. 

The Union of the States rests upon precisely the same grounds 
as does that more sacred relation of husband and w'li'e. But 
no law given could apologize to modern civilization or Christ- 
ianity for the attempt to bind in perpetual legal bonds the deli- 
cate, helpless wife, to the strong and cruel husband. Separation 
is the last remaining remedy of the weak against the strong, of 
the injured against the aggressor. By common consent all lib- 
eral governments have interposed divorces and grant alimonies, 
as the only security of the innocent against the guiltv. 

The argument is not good, that this would separate all families ; 
but upon the contrary, it makes tliose who M'ould retain the 
blessings of the union sacred, more careful of their mutual rights 
and more diligent to consult their mutual interest, which is the 
very object of the solemn union. 

Religious liberty, with all of the hallowed rights of the con- 
science, draws its entire support from civil liberty. But everv 
Christian, after the most solemn administration of the sacrament 
by the consecrated officers of religion, exercise the right to 
withdraw from the tyranny of church government. 

What is the Church of England, the Church of Luther, the 
Church of Calvin, and the Greek Church but a rebellion acrainst. 
and secession from, the Roman Catholic Church? 

"What is the Methodist Episcopal Church but a rebellion 
against, and secession from, the Church of England ? 

AVhat is the -Protestant IMethodist Church but a rebellion 
against, and secession from, the Methodist Episcopal Church? 

What is the Campbellite Church but a rebellion against, and 
secession from, the Baptist Church ? ' Or, in other words, every 
subsequent Christian Church, in the full and free exercise of 
their religious liberty, are obnoxious to the objection of rebellion 



48 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL "VVAE. 

against, and secession from, the parent Church. It were to be 
desired that all churches should be one, bound in the chains of 
blessedness and love. But since they will not be, every friend 
of religious liberty demands for himself and for his Church, the 
right for separate organization. Civil liberty, the parent of 
religious liberty, demands the same rights of civil communities 
which are awarded to religious communities ; and as the church 
is one by the free government of each separate organization of 
its members, so is the great union of the States one by the sepa- 
rate government of all the States, as provided in Mr. Jefferson's 
resolution of 1798. Just as religion in centralization is the pa- 
rent of the most horrible persecution, so is civil centralization 
the source of the most cruel despotism. Now is the time for 
the appeal to the doctrine of this resolution. 

The wisdom and foresight of the statesman and patriot in the 
assertion of the rights of self-government at a time when every 
American was perilling his life to maintain them inviolate, was 
not more remarkable than that when at the very time every 
right of self-government is imperilled, and tyrants are taking 
advantage of their temporary power, that Democrats should 
fear to assert, enforce and defend it, when it is, in fact, the only 
barrier that stands between us and that despotism which is 
sweeping as a deadly simoon over every hamlet of the most 
beautiful country of the continent, leaving desolation in its 
horrible path, and marking its loathsome trail with innocent 
blood, and enforcing its power in violation of law. 

The overthrow of civil government in America was the only 
way in which these doctrines could be overthrown. 

Upon the question of coercion !Mr. Seward says: 

" The Federal Government cannot reduce the seceding States 
to obedience by conquest." " Only an imperial despotic gov- 
ernment can subjugate thoroughly insurrectionary members of 
the State." " This Federal Republican system is the very one 
which is most unfitted for such a labor." 

The early attempts to fasten odious laws upon the people of 
the States by the Genera? Government was resisted and con- 
demned by the people in the election of Thomas Jefferson, and 
the repeal of the alien and sedition laws. 



CEI.MES OF THE CIVIL WAR, 49 

Tjie doctrines of the Government were well established, and 
could not have been overthrown except by arbitrary power. 

This was the accepted theory upon which the Government 
was successfully administered for three-c^uarters of a century : 

"Resolved, That the several States composing the United States 
are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their 
General Government, but that by compact, under the stvle and 
title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments 
thereto, they constituted a General Government, for special pur- 
poses — delegated to that Government certain definite powers, 
reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to 
their sejf-government ; and that whenever the General Govern- 
ment assumes undelegated power, its acts are unauthoritative, 
void, and of no force; That to this compact each State acceded 
as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to 
itself, the other jmrty ; that the Government created by this 
compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent 
of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its 
discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers ; 
but that, as in all other cases of compact among persons having 
no common judge, each pjarty has an equal right to judge for 
itself, as tcell of refractions as of the mode and measure of redress." 
— The First Kentucky Resolution of 1798. 

N This doctrine M^as clearly set forth by Daniel Webster in liis 
declaration that this is a national government : 

" The Constitution was made by the States, and not bv the 
people united. It should therefore read, 'We, tlie people of the 
States United.' It was voted for by the States in the Convention, 
submitted to the people of each State severally, and became the 
Constitution only of the States adopting it."^ It is a Federal 
Constitution, and not a A^ational Government." — Daniel Webster. 

So generally conceded was the theory of State sovereignty, 
that the Chicago Convention which nominated Mr, Lincoln to 
the Presidency, stated it in these words : 

"Resolved, 1. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of 
the States, and especially the right of each State to order and 
control its own domestic institutions, according to its own judo-- 
ment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which 
the perfection and endurance of our political fliith depends." 



50 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER V. 

Instituting Retrospective Test Oaths to Destroy the Freedom of the 
Elective Franchise. 

Test oaths in tlieir mildest forms have always been odious to 
either a free or honest people, as the most ready means of ensla- 
ving them and corrupting their public officers. 

In the new system among us the test oath assumed a triple form 
of enormity against Christianity, civilization, and humanity. 

These test oaths are retrospective and ex j)ost facto, unconsti- 
tutional and monstrous. This is the ulterior limit to which des- 
potism itself may travel. Under this cover every crime may hide 
in the shadow of power, and every virtue may be crushed out 
which seeks protection in the temple of Justice. 

The unreasonable crime of the Roman tyrant who wrote his 
laws in small letters and placed them out of sight of the people, 
is exceeded by the Congress which legislates upon the actions of 
the past; imposes Constitutional amendments to protect infamous 
criminals from just punishments due to past crimes against ex- 
isting laws. 

This test oath is a crime against humanity, which compels 
men to give testimony against themselves, under jxiins and 
penalty of perjury, with disfranchisement upon the one hand 
and the State's prison on the other. 

No such power can be reposed in courts or legislatures. The 
common law which came down to us laden with the learning, 
liberty, and civilization of centuries, revolts at the crime of 
forcing a man to testify against himself. His attorney, physician, 
or minister, is not allowed to reveal professional confidence 
committed to him. This precaution is a necessity to the integ- 
ritvand success of the profession conceded everywhere and never 
called in question before 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 51 

It is in violation of every theory, maxim and truism of our 
government, against which the united voices of philosophers, 
philanthropists, poets, heroes and statesmen of all Christendom 
come up from the grave and down from heaven with one universal 
denunciation. 

How can a man subscribe to a test oath to supjtort the Con- 
stitution, Avhen the test oath is the most flagrant violation of that 
instrument ever suggested by the evil genius of tyrants, since the 
bloody reigns of the English bigots? 

This has been the chief instrument of the authors of our debt, 
to commit the government to the hands of a mengre minority of 
the lowest, most abandoned and abominable of the population of 
the invaded States. 

Learning from Congress that the States newly organized and 
created by its factions, introduced test oaths to control State gov- 
ernments in the interest of monopolies, after disfranchising the 
people; test oaths were administered to attorneys to drive able 
men from the bar, whilst ministers of the Gosjiel vere not al- 
lowed to perform ceremonies of marriage, bury the dead, baptize 
families, or preach the word of God without taking this blas- 
phemous oath; and any drunken magistrate might arrest him in 
delinquency. To carry the schools with the bar and the pulpit 
in the interest of the Funding System, schoolmasters were sub- 
jected to the same oaths. Sisters of Charity in Missouri were 
arrtsted like felons for teaching orphan children vithout gov- 
ernment permission, and taken off by beastly constabularies, 
when engaged in the very act of feeding the hungry and visiting 
the sick. 

Test oaths were the natural and necessary accompaniments of 
the thumbscrew, boot and torture. They are children of dark 
ages that cannot live in separation. 

On the 6th day of April, 1789, in the House of Eepresenta- 
tives, Messrs. White, Madison, Trumbull, Oilman and Cadwal- 
lader, reported the following form of oath to be taken by the 
members of Congress, according to the requirements of the Con- 
stitution : 

" I, A. B., a Representative of the United States in the Con- 
gress thereof, do solemnly swear or affirm (as the case may be,) 



52 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

in tlie presence of Almiglity God, that I will support the Consti- 
tution of the United States. So help me God." 

This form remained unchanged until tlie beghming of the pres- 
ent usurpation. 

The oaths of supremacv, abjuration and allegianee made with 
all possible legal severity to exclude Catholics and Quakers from 
the polls, Avere not retrospective. 

The great offer of repentance under the Christian system, is 
extended to the Avorst ottenders. The high.cst hope of the ])atriot 
is that all men shall renew their allegiance and the unh.appy 
past be forgotten; and oblivion kindly afford a sepulchre for the 
misery, crime and insanity of the five years which have beclouded 
the most brilliant era of the liaman race. 

The Marquis de Concordet defended Voltaire — dissimulation 
to save him from the penalties of the law was used in these remark- 
able words : " The necessity of lying in order to disavow any 
work, is an extremity equally repugnant to conscience and noble- 
ness of character, but the crime lies with those unjust men Avho 
render such an avowal necessary to the safety of him whom they 
force to it. If you have made a crime of Avhat is not one; if by 
absurd or arbitrary laws you have infringed the natural rights 
which all men have not only to form an opinion but to render it 
public, then you deserve to lose the right which every man has 
of hearing the truth from the mouth of another — a riglit which 
is the sole basis of that vigorous obligation not to lie. If it is 
not permitted to deceive the reason, is that to deceive any one, is 
to do him a Avrong or expose yourself to do him one ; but a wrong 
supposes a right, and no one has the right of seeking to secure 
himself the benefit of an injustice." 

It is a crime to apologize for liars who avow opinions which 
they do not hold, still more to defend those who take false oaths, 
but the burden of the falsehood or perjury rests upon those who 
create the test oaths which make men formally abjure their inher- 
ent rights. 

They are accessories of perjury who make perjury a necessity 
of life. 

The Catholic member Avho took the test oath was not so guilty 
of perjury as the tyrant who assumed dominion over the secret 



crim'es of the civil ^YAn. 53 

thoughts of the soul, and radely interfered between mnn and liis 
Maker, and tli rusts his presence into the avenues of freedom as 
a hindrance to its existence. 

The law maker avIio forces men to lie in self-preservation, has 
no right to hear the truth. 

We must always distinguish between the crime and the crim- 
inal. When the highwayman has been killed in the attempt to 
plunder, he is, notwithstanding his misfortune, the criminal. 

If the burglar enters your house and demands your money, 
you arc under no obligation to tell him where it is. You have 
a right to mislead him, because he has no right to know. 

^ou are no more to be ensnared by the wiles of an enemy 
than to be poisoned by tlie sweetmeats of the incendiary. Ex- 
torted oaths to make you a ixirticcps crha'uds in your own de- 
struction or degradation, cannot bind you. 

An oath is the most solemn sanction that can be given. By 
invocation of the Deity it is always voluntary, and must be kept 
sacredly, for the foundation of society rests upon it. 

Only the most intolerant bigots and besotted atheists create 
test oaths, and no government outlives them which submits to 
their exaction. 

The test oath is but one of a family of the most formidable 
and ferocious wild beasts that prey upon society. The v.diole 
brood have been let loose upon us at once. Questions wiiicli 
have been settled for centuries in favor of liberty, have been 
reopened in favor of despotism. 

The whole machinery now employed is identical M'ith that of 
the Florentine Republic, when one party expelled the other as 
in turn they regained or usurped power ; until the tenure of 
every sacred right vacillated with the caprice, passion and interest 
of the faction successful for the moment. 

The fruits are upon us. Assassination of private citizens by 
public officers ; the exaction of test oaths; the exclusion of citi- 
zens from the polls ; then their exclusion from the Courts. 
Government by brute force merely always have and always will 
precede revolution, and be followed by the wildest anarchy or 
the most heartless despotism. 



54 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Destruction of Fair and Free Election. 

The Elections do kot bind the people in the conse- 
quent Legislation of those who are returned as Leg- 
islators. 

"An election in its most usual acceptation, signifies the choice 
which several persons collectively, make of a person to fill an 
office or place." 

"These should be free and uninfluenced, either by hope or 
fear." 

" And to render this freedom as perfect as possible, electors 
are generally exempted from arrest in all cases except treason, 
felon V, or breach of the peace, during their attendance on elections; 
and in ooino; to and returnino; from them. And provisions are 
made by law in several States to prevent the interference or ap- 
pearance of the military, on the election ground." 

" And as it is essential to the very being of parliament, that 
elections should be absolutely free, all undue infiuence whatever 
upon the electors, is illegal and strongly prohibited. As soon, 
therefore, as the time and place of election within counties or 
boroughs are fixed, all soldiers quartered in the place are to re- 
move at least one day before the election, to the distance of two 
miles or more, and not to return till one day after the poll is 
ended, except in the liberty of Westminster, or other residence 
of the royal family, in respect of his majesty's guards, and in 
fortified places: 8 Geo. 2, c. 30, § 3. Riots, likewise, have been 
frequently determined to make an election void. By vote, also 
of the House of Commons, no Lord of Parliament or Lord 
Lieutenant of a county hath any right to interfere in the elec- 
tion of commoners; and by statute, the Lord Warden of the 
Cinque Ports shall not recommend any members therefor. If 
any officer of the excise, customs, stamps or certain other 
branches of the revenue, presume to intermeddle in elections, by 
persuading any voter or dissuading him, he forfeits one hundred 
pounds, and is disabled to hold any office, consistently with tlie 
same principle ; also it has been decided that a Mager between 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 55 

two electors upon tlie success of their respective candidates, is 
illegal and void, for were it permitted, it would manifestly cor- 
rupt the freedom of elections." — 1 T. 11. 55. 

Indeed, however, the electors of one branch of the legislature 
may be secured from any undue influence, from either of the 
other two, and from all external violence and compulsion. The 
greatest danger is that in which themselves co-operate by the in- 
famous practice of bribery and corruption to prevent ; which it 
is enacted that no candidate shall, after the date (usually called 
the icstr)) of the writs ; or after the ordering of the writs, that is 
after the signinc: of the warrant of the chancellor for issiiino; the 
writs, [Sim 165) or after any vacancy, give any money or enter- 
tainment to his electors, or promise to give any, either to par- 
ticular persons or to the place in general, in order to his being 
elected on pain of being incapable to serve that place in parlia- 
ment : that is, incapable of ecrving upon that election by 7 and 

8 W. 3, c. 4, commonly called the Treating Act. It was decided 
by one committee, that treating vacates the election only; and 
that the candidate was disqualified from being re-elected and 
sitting upon a second return. 3 Lud. 455. But a contrary de- 
termination was made by the Southwark committee, in the first 
session of the Parliament called in 1796; who declared a candi- 
date disqualified on the ground of his having treated at a former 
election, which -was declared void for such treating. It has been 
supjioscd that the payment of travelling expenses and a compen- 
sation for loss of time, were not treating or bribery within this 
or any other statute ; and a bill passed the House of Commons, 
to subject such case to the penalties imposed by 2 Geo. 2, e. 24, 
upon persons guilty of bribery. But this bill was rejected in 
the House of Lords by the opposition of Lord Mansfield, v/ho 
strenuously maintained that the bill was superfluous; that such 
conduct by the laws in being was clearly illegal; and subject in 
a court of law to the penalty of bribery. 2 Lud. 67. 

To guard against gross and flagrant acts of bribery, it is en- 
acted by the 2 Geo. 2, c. 24, (explained and enlarged by the 

9 Geo. 2, c. 38 and 16 Geo. 3, c. 11) that if any money, gift, 
office, employment, or reward be given or promised to be given 
to any voter, at any time in order to influence him to give or 



56 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

withhold his vote, as well as ho tliat takes as he that offers such 
a bribe, forfeits <£500, and is forever disabled from voting at any 
election for a member of Parliament and holding any office in 
any corporation ; unless before conviction, he will discover some 
other offender of the same kind, and then he is indemnified for 
his own offence. But these statues do not create any incapacity 
of sitting in the House ; that depends solely on the Treating Act 
already mentioned. 

It has been held that it is bribery if a candidate gives an elec- 
tor money to vote for him, though he afterwards votes for 
another. 3 Burr 1235. And there can be no doubt but it 
would also be bribery in the voter, for the Avords of the statute 
clearly makes the offence mutual. And it has been decided that 
such vote will not be available to the person to whom it may 
afterwards be given gratuitously ; though the propriety of this de- 
cision has been (picstioned by respectable authority. 2 Dour/. 416. 
An instance is given in 4 Doug. oGQ, of an action in which 
twenty-two penalties to the amount of XI 1,000 were recovered 
against one defendant. 

By the 49 Geo. 3, c. 118, for better securing the independence 
and purity of Parliament by preventing the procuring or obtain- 
ing seats in Parliament by corrupt practices; after reciting or 
promising any gift, office, place or gratuity, to procure the return 
of a member, if not made for the use of a returning officer, or 
votes is not bribery within the meaning of the act, (2 Geo. 2, c. 
24,) but that such gifts or promises are contrary to the ancient 
usage, right, and freedom of election, and contrary to the laws 
and the Constitution. The following penalties are imposed ou 
all persons giving or pr^^mising, and on all persons giving or 
receiving any sum of money, gift or reward, upon any engage- 
ment to procure or endeavor to procure, the election or return 
of a member of parliament ; viz : on the party giving or prom- 
ising if not returned as a member, £1000; and on the party 
giving or promising, or privy if not returned a member, forfeit- 
ure of his seat ; and ou the jjarty receiving, forfeiture of the 
money received, and also £500 to be recovered by any party 
suino- for the same in the Sui>ei'ior Courts of Pecord in Great 
Britain or Ireland. § 1. The act contains a proviso for ''any 



CRIJIES OF THE CIVIL AVAU. 57 

legal expense bona fide incurred at or concerning such election." 
§ 2. Penalties are also imposed on any persons who shall j)ro- 
cure or promise to give, or procure any office, place or employ- 
ment to any person upon any express contract, to procure a seat 
in Parliament, viz : on the member returned (so giving or pro- 
curing, or promising or privy,) loss of his seat; on the receiver 
of the office, forfeiture, incapacity and £500 ; and on any per- 
son, (holding any office under the Crown,) who shall give any 
office, &c., upon any such account, £1000. § 3. mictions on this 
statute must be brought within two years. § 4. 

Beside the penalties thus imposed by the Legislature, bribery 
is a crime at common law, and punishable by indictment or in- 
formation ; though the Court of King's Bench, will not, in ordi- 
nary cases, grant an information within tM'O years ; tlie time 
within which an action may be brought for the penalties, under 
the statute. 3 Burr 1335, 1337. But this rule does not effect a 
prosecution by indictment or information by the Attorney Gen- 
eral, who in one case was ordered by the Plouse to prosecute two 
persons who had procured themselves to be returned by bribery. 
They were convicted and sentenced by the Court of King's 
Bench to pay each a fine of 1,000 marks, and to be imprisoned 
six months. — 4 Doug., 292. 

In order to diminish the expenses of elections, it is enacted by 
7 and 8 Geo. c. 37, that no person elected to serve in Parliament 
shall after the teste of the writ of summons or after the place 
becomes vacant before his election, by himself or his agent, give 
or allow to any voter or to any inhabitant of city, county town, 
etc., any cockade, ribbon, or other mark of distinction. 

Great abuses have existed in several corporations by the appli- 
cation of the corporate property for electioneei'ing purposes and 
towards the expenses of the favored candidates. The 2 and 3 
W. 4, c. 69, was passed to restrain such aj)plication in future, 
and a variety of provisions are enacted for that purpose ; and 
members of corporations ofl'ending against the act are declared 
guilty of a misdemeanor. 

Undue influence being thus endeavoured to be elfectually 
guarded against, the election is to be proceeded with on the day 
appointed : the Sheriff or other returning officer first taking an 



58 CRIMES OF TPIE CIVIL WAR. 

oath against bribery and for the due execution of his ofiice. As 
soon as the returning officer lias taken this oath, he must read, 
or cause to be read, the Bribery Act, under the penalty of £50. 
The candidates likewise, if required, must swear to their quali- 
fication, or their election shall be void. — Tonilin's Laic Diction- 
ary, Vol. 3, page 50 and 51. 

Fraud vitiates all contracts, but none more clearly than the 
issue of an election. 

For the last five years in this country every conceivable mean- 
ing of the word, election, has been outraged. The work of 
coercion commenced with the elections in Maryland, after the 
outbreak of the civil war. Cavalry surrounded the polls to 
intimidate voters : when this failed, judges of the election were 
arrested ; sheriiFs and their posses were driven away for executing 
the laws. I cite but an instance. On the day before the election, 
in 1863, under the order of Schenck, cavalry and inflmtry Avent 
to Salisbury, scattered through the counties of Somerset and 
AVorcester, to spread terror among the people. The proclamation 
of Gov. Bradford maintaining the law, Avas set at defiance, and 
military vagabonds joined in an election of representatives, to 
ruin tlie people and destroy the State, When men of character 
were elected, they were forced to resign upon pain of imprison- 
ment. Such was the course of Senator Holland, elected by eight 
hundred majority, from Dorchester County. 

For refusing to resign. Waters was di-agged to prison, subjected 
to every indignity of provost marshals, jailers, and the cruelties 
suggested by the shallow ingenuity of AYallace, the commander. 

This was the style and animus of the Congressional election 
from the Eastern shore to the Youghiogheny. So monstrous 
and so common were these things, that their detail would be 
voluminous. 

In Delaware, the elections employed force in deterring voters 
from the polls by fraud, in substituting false returns and forged 
votes. Such were the elections under Schenck on all of the 
Eastern shore. i 



CHIMES OF THE CIVIL A\ AK. 



THE FARCE OF THE LATE ELECTION IN DELAWARE. 

In a late disciipsion in the United States Senate, Mr. Saulsbuiy, 
(Opposition,) of Delaware, said : 

"I have seen the armed soldiery of the 'powers that be' at 
the polls, and by positive interference drive dozens of voters away. 
This was in my oMn State (Delaware) no longer ago than last 
November. The majority of the voters of the State of Delaware 
at the late election were not allowed to cast their votes at the 
polls because they did not approve of this Administration. He 
would ask, Has there ever been any attempt by that State to 
violate any law of this Government? Has that State ever given 
any encouragement by any act or deed to those in revolt against 
the Government ? He defied any Senator on this floor to show 
where the State of Delaware had attempted to tear down the 
fabric of this glorious Union, and yet the party in power, finding 
that they could not send representatives of their own choice to 
the other branch of the National Legislature, allow a military 
man* to publish an order that ' no citizen should vote unless he 
should take an oath such as he prescribed.' The hero of a military 
operation on a railroad can make his will the supreme law of 
voting and say, ' You shall not vote unless you become subject 
to my will.' This was freedom of election, indeed ! The hero 
of the blood-stained field of Vienna sent his military forces to 
every election poll in the State of Delaware, authorizing them 
beforehand what to do, and saying to the people what they must 
do. A sovereign State thus became a playtliing in the hands of 
a military officer, Avho has never distinguished himself in any 
way in tlie service of his country." 

In New Hampshire, where physical force was unnecessary, arbi- 
trary power was interposed in a style of which the following is 
a condensed specimen : 

" War Department, Adjutant General's Office, ) 
Washington, March 13, 1863. j 

Special Order, No. 34. 

By the direction of the President, the following officers are 
hereby dismissed the service of the United States: Lieutenant 
A. J. Edgerly, 4th New Hamnshire Volunteers, for circulating 



60 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Copperlieaxl tickets, and doing- all in his power to promote the 
success of the rel)el cause in his State. 

By order of the Secretary of AVar. 

L. Thomas, Adft Gen. 

To the Governor of Isew Hampshire." 

The elections in Kentucky were the most horrible pretences 
for enormous crime. The sickening butcheries of Tayne, Avho 
dug graves in advance to bury men as they might chance to go 
by, shocked the people and drove them i'rom the polls. 

Payne was followed by Burbriuge who, to a contemptible im- 
becility, added a shameless brutal instinct. 

In his treatment of his neighbors, Burbridgc vied Mith tlie 
viper that eats its way into the world through the vitals of its 
mother. With a bloody cruelty at which savages shudder, he 
drove the people from the polls. 

At elections for members of Congress, old and respectable 
citizens were beaten away by military mobs, for offering an of- 
fensive ballot; and tied up by the thund)s to limbs of trees for 
daring to express an opinion at the polls. Judge Duval was 
expelled the State by military force, because he was a candidate 
for an office he had honorably filled for many years before. 

New oaths were administered at will and passion ; military 
orders were issued to enforce arbitrary power; squads of soldiers 
were let loose upon the polls in one place and would drive voters 
from other places, voting over and over again. 

The frauds were systematized and forces disciplined. Fur- 
louo-hs and their extension were granted to soldiers upon condi- 
tions disgraceful to their manly vocation and humiliating to 
manhood itself, that they might interfere in elections. 

The old tools of despotism were found to be none the less 
powerful because they had been employed before ; nor the less 
dangerous because they were cruel, and employed other unscru- 
pulous instruments with such covering of fraud and deceit as 
would escape detection in tlie act. 

Those entrusted with this Mickcd ^vovk were cold, cunning, 
sly and cruel, who measured their Avork by the necessities of 
success. 

In all of the States where military force dare not be employed, a 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. Gl 

svstcni of ballot fraud was practiced which swept the elections 
without regard to the uumbcrs p;olled. Wherever the party in 
power had control of the election board, they M'ould carefully cal- 
culate the numbers necessary to success on the whole county, or 
would greatly augment former majorities by this simple plan. 
The board would adjourn for meals, and during the recess, some 
one secreted for thepurjiose, remaining in the room with a key to 
the ballot-box, would unlock it and take out as many Democratic 
tickets as were necessary to secure the desired majority, and sub- 
stitute them with Re])ublican ballots. 

This was generally done in some remote room whither the 
ballot-box was taken, where detection was avoidable. 

These frauds wei'e so flagrant as to be demonstrable. 

In some places the majority appeared greater than the actual 
vote should have been in a fair election ; in other places the vote 
embraced more than the entire male population. The soldiers 
frequently voted without regard to their nativity or domicile, 
and then voted many times the same day at diiierent precincts. 

JMoney was employed to buy votes where muskets failed to 
intimidate voters. 

Manufactories commanded the votes of their employees with 
the same facility that the coachman reins his horse, or the shep- 
herd herds his fold. 

The daily bread of thousands was withheld as the price of 
their liberty. 

The banks employed the double thong of usury and protest 
with their creditors, to compel them to sustain the funded-banking 
system. 

The political churches were pressed into the same unholy ser- 
vice by the rich pewholders ; and the minister inveighed in terrible 
style against his political opponents, and terrified the poorer part 
of his congregation to vote with the rich and sustain monopolies 
with fanaticism, under no less sanction than the hopes of heaven, 
the terrors of hell, and immediate excommunication from the 
church. 

Landlords made their tenants vote their tickets under penalty 
of dispossession ; and in the rural districts, executed their purpose 
with severity. 



62 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Such was the comljinations of force and fraud on the elections, 
where fanaticism and falsehood had failed to secure a controlling 
influence over the floating vote of the county, which is always 
necessary to the permanent security of tyrants in ill-gotten 
power. 

To cover uj) the enormity of these outrages pretences were 
made of fears of intention upon the part of the people to interfere 
with elections, wliich are explained by the following order from 
Gen. Hooker: 

Headquarters Northerx Department, | 
Cincinnati, October '21 , 1864. j 

^RCULAR. 

The commander of tliis department has received information 
that it is the intention of a large body of men on the northern 
frontier on each side of the line, open on one side, and in disguise, 
on the other, to so organize at the ensuing National Election, as 
to interfere with the integrity of the election, and when in their 
jjower to cast illegal votes ; in fact, in any Avay interfere Avith the 
honest expression of the electors. 

In view of the foregoing facts, it is made the duty of all officers 
of the Government, both civil and military, as well as loyal 
citizens, to guard well the integrity of the ballot-box. 

All military officers, including Provost Marshals and their 
assistants, will be held to strict accountability for the adoption 
of such measures within their districts or commands as will not 
only prevent illegal voting, but to arrest and bring to justice all 
who attempt such voting, or endeavor to prevent the honest ex- 
ercise of the elective franchise. 

The citizens and civil authorities of tlie towns and cities on 
the Northern frontier are particularly requested to give any in- 
formation they may have, or may from time to time receive, to 
the Provost Marshals or military authorities, whose duty it is 
to inform the nearest Provost Marshal General or other military 
authority, and to take measures to arrest and confine any and all 
connected with such organizations. The late raids on the Lakes 
and in New England are ample evidence that neither life nor 
jiroperty are safe. 

AH Provost Marshals and their assistants, and all military 
commanders, will take measures to obtain and rejx>rt at once 
any information that may lead to the prevention of this inter- 



CRIiMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 63 

ference with the riglits of the people, or aid in the arrest and pun- 
ishment of the offenders : they from time to time will leport by 
telegraph any new facts. 

Local authorities will receive all the aid within the control of 
the military commander. 

By command of 

Major General HOOKER. 
Official : 

Such was the spirit of the elections and the manner of holding 
them. 

Under this bold and wicked flirce, Charles Upton, an Ohio 
adventurer, and William E. Lehman, quite as strange a bird in 
old Virginia, by a few vagabond civilians and drunken soldiers, 
were authorized to represent a community of a million of people 
to whom they were strangers, and fasten a debt of thousands of 
millions of dollars upon the country. 

Such elections are ipso facto void. Would any bench of jud- 
ges that ever sat in chancery over the affairs of men, allow a tax 
sale made under a law, which worked a forfeiture for delin- 
quency, if such law had been enacted by men thus elected. 

If such farces are to be accounted elections, what security 
have we that monarchy may not supplant our republican form 
of government. What security have we for religious liberty? 
What security have the poor against the combinations of Avealth, 
influence and political power, which may grind them to the 
earth ? Upon the other hand, if these elections are inaugurated 
by the rich, why may not the poor who have superior numbers 
turn upon their oppressors, and bear down all before them. In 
such a revolution, leaders are always at hand. Wat Tyler, Jack 
Cade and John Wilkes never die. The very instruments that 
were used to destroy the freedom of elections, will join any other 
counter revolution to destroy the destroyer. 

Thousands of poor fellows, hurried oft* to the field of slaughter, 
return to their homes made desolate by the hands of those that 
cheered them on their way froin home — out of employment, or 
what is worse, disabled. During a relentless revolution, new 
doctrines have been taught which may not be lost upon them. 
Equality is a term of broad signification and may be applied to 
property as well as suffrage. . 



64 CrJ]MES OF THE CIVIL WAr.. 

If men may forcibly or fraudulently vote in an election to 
destroy the wrongs of which they may complain, then they may 
declaim against the inequality of property which is held Ify the 
few and absorbs their substance. They may demand the equal- 
ity of ownership and enjoyment of property. 

The toiling millions who fight the battles, build railroads, 
clear forests, rear cities and cultivate the soil, are never rich; and 
may be known by their coarse food, rude habitations, plain dress, 
unlettered tongue ; but they are still men — the best, the proud- 
est and purest of our race. 

When these men shiver in the storm and pass by the stores 
of those that never toil, thousands of substantial garments yet 
unworn lying loosely on the shelves, tlie tatterdemalions will 
survey themselves and examine their wardrobe. Their toes are 
breaking through their boots; their elbows grinning through 
their sleeves; their knees peeping through their pants; the long 
cold winter passing slowly with its fruitless labor and heavy de- 
mand upon the purse ; tlie leader will lift his dissatisfied voice 
to his companions, crying the greatest good to the greatest num- 
ber. Here are a hundred of us poor fellows, all covered with 
rags, and your room is lined with thousands of new suits. We 
declare for a general divide. The crowd responds and takes a 
new suit each. The crowd pass on to the grocery and the orator 
repeats the Agrarian axiom, the greatest good to the greatest 
number, until the miller and the butcher share the same divis- 
ion. Once emancipated from the exactions of law, like wild 
beasts, society will slay and devour its members, and they that 
appeal to violence shall by violence be destroyed. 

But to violence was added perjury, as the instrument of suc- 
cess in these elections. And when the people have introduced 
these monstrous crimes into society, they must not be surprised 
that society is destroyed by its vices. 

This may be accepted as an unchanging axiom that no state 
ever adopted a false system of government which did not work 
out an early ruin for herself. No church ever yielded to an in- 
vasion of doctrine which did not ultimately overthrow its eccle- 
siastical system. Nor can we hope to be an exception to a rule 
so general and a law so exacting. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 65 

No people ever parted with their liberty without being them- 
selves responsible as the agents, as well as the victims -of their 
degradation. History amply vindicates this truth. 

Cromwell trampled down the people of Great Britain M'ith a 
meagre, but furious minority. 

Lincoln at no time had the support of more than one-third of 
the electoral vote of the country. 

But his was the spirited and devilish third. 

Those of the Church embraced in his party, were the fanatics 
of every faith ; spiritual adventurers who sow dissension among 
their people, that they may reap harvests of gain from the ripen- 
ed strife. 

Of financiers, he gathered around him the stock gamblers ; 
speculators, usurers and extortioners, who inflame the money 
market and win the prizes in a general bankruptcy. 

Of the young, the violent attached themselves to his fortunes. 

Of the thinking, only the shallow and conceited were con- 
sulted. 

Of the philosophers, statesmen, jurists and Christians, there 
were none whose counsels were sought or whose opinions were 
followed. 

This party, consisting of force and vehemence, lasted longer 

than if it had been directed by prudent men of great knowledge, 

which would have been fatal to success. The success of such 

revolutions depends upon a union of just such forces who, well 

knowing the weakness and stupidity of those remaining, pre- 

e their own action upon the non-resistance of the oppressed. 

his was the secret of the growing power of Lincoln and his 

L who overthrew the government, and perpetuate the usurpa- 

I of its powers through the imbecite cowardice of those they 

e robbed of liberty. 

Che coercion, corruption and control of elections was necessary 

the usurpation, and it required but short deliberation to deter- 
uxiiue upon these means to accomplish it. From these elections 
emanated the public debt ; but the elections were void. 

I cite alone 

THE MISSOURI ELECTION. 

The election in the State of Missouri and city of St. Louis, was 
5 



6G CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

the first fruits of a system of chicanery without parailei in the 
history of civilization in any country. Can such elections bind 
any one? There is not one subtle fraud, or lying subterfuge, 
or villainous evasion, which has not found its May into the forms 
of the Constitution of the State of Missouri — to fisten in its 
body those enormous crimes unknown to the English language, 
which would have raised a rebellion in any country under 
heaven. 

I. Tiic test oaths of the dark ages, which were merely pre- 
requisite, have been improved upon and made retrospective in 
their bearing. 

II. Men were forced to bear testimony against themselves in 
violation of all the well-known usages of the judiciary in every 
country. 

III. Men were disfranchised and robbed of vested rights 
without trial. 

These are grounds of resistance held to by people everywhere. 
To carry this infernal work into complete operation, force and 
fraud were necessary, indeed indispensable, and the constitution 
was conformed exactly to it. The legislature of last winter 
prejiared the programme for carrying on the elections by a ming- 
ling of force and fraud. The vigilance of the President circum- 
vented the evil purposes of the Governor, which preserved us 
from liis mercenary militia, which tlireatened the polls in every 
precinct in the State, where it became necessary to overawe the 
people by threats of coercion to drive them into submission. 
But the removal of the arms from the hands of these vagabonds, 
made it a necessity that the whole work should be consummated 
by fraud alone — bald fraud, stark naked — was employed to do 
the work alone. Fraud was introduced as the chief of ceremo- 
nies, and commenced the su])erintendence of the whole service. It 
was adjudged a crime sufficient to disfranchise a man that he had 
fed the hungry, clothed the naked, ministered to the sick, or cared 
for strangers — if any of these persons had been in any wise con- 
nected with the late civil war, though commanded to do these 
things to all men by the law of God ; the long infernal oaths 
then administered were so blasphemous, absurd and outrageous, 
that thousands of good men who love their country and its gov- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. G7 

ernmcnt with unfaltering devotion, shrank from the liorrid dose, 
and scorned to accept their vote upon such terms ; whilst vaga- 
bonds without homes, foreigners unnaturalized, convicts from 
prisons, octoroons and Indians, were registered, the only ques- 
tions put, were whether their votes might be maui[)ulated by the 
paity in power for their own purposes of evil. But the legist ra- 
tion was a failure. There Avas a clear majority of the registered 
voters of every county in the State who would have voted the 
conservative ticket. In St. Louis county, the Radical voters 
never amounted to more than 5,500 votes — Avithout importation 
from other places. AVhen the registration was completed and 
announced as 26,000 votes in round numbers, which would have 
left nearly 1 5,000 majority for the conservatives. Such is the con- 
clusion of figures made by the last five years. On this state of facts 
the people went to the polls. But here they were met by the Iraud 
in the intricate system of districting. All the old Avard lines Avere 
Aviped out, ncAV districts AA^ere formed by obscure streets, alleys, 
and unusual names, so as to confuse the voter, and not one-half 
of the voters of the city kncAV Avliere their voting place could be 
found. And still others could not find their places of registra- 
tion, and Avhen they Avent to the polls, they Avere required to 
bring Avitnesses of their registration. Neither time nor space 
will admit of a detail of the Avrongs and petty annoyances im- 
posed upon the people to depriA^e them of A^oting. But to croAvn 
the iniquity, the districts Avere so gerrymandered as to put a 
number in a polling district impossible to be polled at one bal- 
lot-box. Then Jiundreds of men Avere standino; in a solid 
column, from the AvindoAV of the polls into the streets, and no 
one voting, the judge Avould quibble about the registration for 
half an hour, and in the meantime the i)olice Avould hustle in 
some Badical, Avho Avas knoAvn by shoAving his ticket, Avhich had 
a device upon it, and the police alloAAcd him to pass, and the 
judges received his vote Avithout question. This Avas done, so 
that a dozen Radicals Avould vote Avhilst one Democrat Avas in 
Avaiting to deposit his vote. In the meantime the judges Avould 
declare that they could not find the name of the Democratic 
voter. In this Avay at least ] 1,000 Democratic voters Avere dis- 
franchised openly, shamelessly. But this Avas only a part of the 



68 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL "\VAE. 

villainy resorted to Ly these wicked men. They imported young 
men from Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania into St. Louis, hid 
among the confusion of the city, and secretly registered, after the 
other registrations had ceased, and counted as voters. Iowa con- 
iributed in the same way to the full extent of her capacity, until 
the meagre number of voters of the Eadicals were somewhat 
swelled. The murderer, McNeil, was elected in this way, by 
about one-fifth of the actual votes of St. Louis county. But 
when every other subterfuge failed them, they played the villain 
in counting. They multilated the record, destroyed the tickets, 
and counted only to suit their fraudulent purposes. This is the 
farce called an election in the State of Missouri. The people en- 
dure it. There are in the county of St. Louis, fair estimated, 
40,000 voters capable of bearing arras. Of these, 7,000 may be 
radicals, which leaves 33,000 conservatives and democrats, who 
will not endure forever these infernal wrongs. This leaves about 
five to one. These 33,000 votes will not endure disfranchisement. 
It is only a question of time, and that a very short one, how long 
this shall be endured by a people born free. It does not help 
the matter that these 7,000 revolutionary voters are adventurers, 
strangers and speculators; that the men they elect, are mere 
hangers-on upon society. There is a lurking danger in these 
wrongs, that threatens revolution. The fathers of the govern- 
ment went to war for far less cause, and sensible men ought to 
know that in a great city like St. Louis, and a great State like 
Missouri, there can be no security for property Avhere there is 
no guarantee for liberty, and the seven thousand imported vaga- 
bonds who disfranchise 33,000 freemen, need not be astonished 
at any moment to hear of an outbreak. The polls have been 
closed against them. The courts have become the pitiful tools 
of the miserable tyrants. 



CHIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. G9 



CHAPTER VII. 

DiSINTEGKATION OF CONGRESS. 

A free people may not be enslaved by a ruinous debt r.pon 
slight pretence or for trivial causes. 

Such debt must be contracted in strict comformity with law. 

1. The Congress must be legally constituted. 

2. It must be legally elected. 

3. The laws under which a debt is created must be enacted 
in conformity with the prescribed forms of legislation. 

4. The money must be appropriated by law. 

5. The purposes for which it is paid out must be legitimate. 

the legal constitution of congress. 

1. "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a 
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate 
and House of Representatives." 

2. " The House of Representatives shall be composed of 
members chosen every second year by the people of the several 
States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications 
requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State 
Legislature." [Art. I, Sec. 2.) 

3. " The Senate of the United States shall be composed of 
two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof 
for six years, and each Senator shall have one vote." {Art. II, 
Sec. 3.) 

4. *• No State shall be deprived of its equal suiJrage in the 
Senate." [Art. Y, near the last clause.) 

These organic laws are not only the rules defining the powers 
of Congress, but they are the source from whence ('ongress de- 
rives its existence. 

There can be no Congress except as thus created. 

Has there been' any such body in the United States within the 
last six years ? 



70 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Has each State at least one representative ? Has tliere Lcen 
in session a body composed of two Senators from each State, 
chosen by the Legislature thereof? 

Any disfranchisement of the States in either branch of Con- 
gress divests that body of its power to make laws of binding 
force upon the people of the States not represented, according to 
the spirit of the last article of the Constitution — if it does not 
divest it of its entire law-making power. 

" A minority of each House may compel the attendance of 
a])sent members, and under such penalties as each House may 
provide." But it is abhorent to justice as well as our political 
system, that a majority in session should expel all tlie absent 
members, or a part elected organize before the election of the 
others, expel them as the elections occur and vote to exclude all 
who difier with them in opinion. 

Precisely this has been done by the representatives of a part 
of the States, who have expelled the members of all of the 
Southern States, and such members of the Northern States as 
disagree with them in opinion. 

Upon the same analogy of power the next Congress may expel 
New York, then Pennsylvania, and successively combining, may 
expel all of the larger States, until there are none left except 
those having sufficient numerical strength to expel the rest. 
Such a body can have no higher legal existence than seven mem- 
bers of a jury, ^^hobar the door against the entrance of the other 
five. 

Such is the glaring usurpation which has created the enormous 
debt no^v upon us ; which maintains itself by quartering an army 
upon one part of the country, enslaving the jieople by their 
presence, and robbing the otlier part in taxation to forage and 
subsist them. Expulsion of States is the counterpart of secession, 
resting upon the same thesis. 

In its organization, Congress is the creature of the Consti- 
tution, wuth no powers except those derived from the people, 
clearly set forth in that instrument. There has then bsen no law- 
making power in organized existence in the United States for 
some time. There certainly is not such a power now in exist- 
ence. Any organization pretending to such powers is a usurpa- 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 71 

tion, baldly, nakedly, clearly, atrociously a usurpation, without 
an apology founded in the Constitution, whose authority can 
command obedience by the sword alone, without possessing a 
single element of moral power over the people. Congress 
has been a usurpation in the exercise of its usurped legislative 
functions. Its whole legislative career has been marked by a 
perpetual scries of usurpations destructive of the fundamental 
principles of freedom ; any one of which would overthrow civil 
government, if permitted without rebuke and all of which 
combined, have changed the entire character of our institutions. 
Instances might be cited, but a conformity to the spirit of the 
laAV is that rare exception to the whole wild and absurd career of 
that body, whioh can scarcely be noted. The divisions of States, 
the abrogation of the States, the military rule of States, the duress 
of courts, the corruption of courts, the destruction of courts, the 
imprisonment of legislatures, the threatening of legislatures, the 
destruction of legislatures, the duress of Congress, the corruption, 
the mutilation of Congress, the destruction of Congress, are but 
a part of the general usurpation. 



T2 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

The Duress of Congress. 

Congress was in duress during the period of the con- 
tracting OF the public debt. 

No body, either corporate or incorporate, private or public, can 
do any legal act under the restraints of duress. 

The nominal Congress was for five years under the most care- 
fully oi'dered duress, the most exacting espionage, the most com- 
plete terror ever exercised over any deliberative body invested 
with law-making powers. 

From the opening of the war until the conclusion of peace, 
Congress was surrounded with soldiers — menaced by an army, 
whose bristling bayonets gleaming in the sunlight, flashed upon 
the windows of the Capitol, and fell upon the eyes of this terri- 
fied body. The legislation was dictated by the commander-in- 
chief of the army, who acted in advance of all legislation. 

The bold men of the opposition were in perpetual danger of 
assassination or death by the slow torture of the prison. Mobs 
were organized in every part of the country, and members of 
Congress were in danger for every word spoken in conflict with 
the policy of the President, and were imprisoned at his will. 

Mr. Yallandigham was arrested, imprisoned and banished by 
a mob of military idiots under the usurpation of a military com- 
mission. This was inflicted as a punishment for his bold, active, 
defence of the people whilst iu Congress: as well as to intimi- 
date others by the example of his punishment. 

Mr. Wall, of New Jersey, was imprisoned and brutally treat- 
ed because he was a prominent candidate for United States 
Senator, a gentleman of great independence and eminent ability. 

Henry May, of INIaryland, a member of Congress, was im- 
prisoned whilst attending the funeral of an illustrious brother, 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 73 

who liad died of disease contracted in the Mexican war, because 
he was the luminous mind of the Maryland College in Con- 
gress, and the leading spirit of her freemen who stood with un- 
deviating devotion to the government. 

Willis J. Allen, a Congressman of Illinois, was kept in prison 
witli felons, under no charge whatever, wliicli an iniquitous Con- 
gress could make a pretext for his expulsion from that body, be- 
cause an example was required to trample down the people of 
Southern Illinois, and force their acquiescence in the general 
usurpation. 

In its leo-islation, the President neither consulted or awaited 
the action of Congress, but anticipated it ; and accepted the rati- 
fication of their own debasement with avidity. 

In all of this imbecile, terrified body, there was no man wlio 
dared prefer articles of impeachment against the President for 
his crimes, or call in question his actions. 

The mover of impeachment would have been imprisoned and 
destroyed. 

Such men as Yoorhees, Pendleton, Ben. Wood and Long, pro- 
perly chose, quietly to assist to preserve the remnants of liberty 
lingering among the people, and expose the outrages daily per- 
petrated upon their rejjresentatives. 

Tlie press of Benjamin Wood, another Congressman, had been 
suppressed by military interference. 

Such was the terror over the Congress, that its members acted 
as though their powers were derived from the President, and 
with disgraceful servility, these miserable slaves and tools of ty- 
rants for five years, day after day, recorded the edicts of the 
army. 

This Congress represented nobody, was phrenzied by the 
scent of blood like a herd of wild buffaloes stamping the ground 
and rending the air with their hideous lowing. Having lost 
their reason, these Congressmen gave vent to the most loathe- 
some forms of passion to hide the shame of their degradation. 

A body of men dazzled by the gleaming sabre, ready to be 
turned at any moment upon them, looking at the vacant seats of 
members of their body, imprisoned for the legitimate exercise of 
their Constitutional rights, were under such duress as utterly in- 
capacitated them for independent legislation. 



74 CEIMES OF THE CIVIIi WAR. 

Their attempt at law-making was a broad farce, exciting ridi- 
cule and disgust, rather than merriment. 

No act of such a body of legislators can bind the conscience of 
the people ; any more than a deed of trust made under duress, can 
bind the forced grantors, though the body of the deed should 
declare that it was their voluntary act and deed. 

In this terrible reign of crime and usurpation, there Avere 
brave men who defied the arbitrary power of the Adminis- 
tration. 

Among the great men who stood unterrified by threats, un- 
tempted by bribes, and unmoved by persuasion, was Hon. Ben. 
G. Harris, of Maryland, who stood solitary and alone in his 
vote against the subjugation of the people of the Southern 
States ; was at last arrested for feeding two hungry strangers 
who were sent to him for the purpose. This occurred after the 
Avar was over, Avhen to do such a charity was a Christian virtue, 
to be coveted by the purest saint. 

For giving a dollar to satisfy the cravings of- hunger of these 
two poor fellows who Avere on their Avay to their desolate homes, 
after having laid down their arms, after Lee and Johnston had 
surrendered ; this able statesman, Benjamin G. Harris, Avas ar- 
rested, confined and dragged before a committee of military A'ag- 
abonds, declared guilty, and sentenced to three years' imprison- 
ment in the penitentiary. Like a true Eoraan, he scorned to 
ask for pardon, and through very shame the President remitted 
the sentence. But they could neither break the spirit nor sub- 
due the soul of this upright honest man. 

Others there Avere Avho quietly yielded their assent to crimes 
Avhich they abhorred. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 75 



CHAPTER IX. 

The Character of Congress that Robs Us of Liberty. 

The fathers were honest men who saerificed themselves for the 
public good. 

In the earlier history of the country our statesmen lived and 
died poor, and only those of large estates and liberal patrimonies 
when they entered public life, retired with a competency ; and a 
large number died insolvent. 

Thomas Jefferson spent much of his life in public business ; 
investing so much money in such historical and political works 
as would contribute to the more perfect understanding of our 
new institution, he died poor, and had to be relieved from 
want in old age by special legislation ; although he had added 
the Louisiana territory to the Union. 

James Monroe was utterly destitute in old age and indebted 
to the charity of friends for a decent burial, although he had 
fought through the Revolutionary War and added Florida to 
the Union. 

Robert Morris, the great American financier, spent his latter 
years in prison for debt, though he had bestowed a fortune in 
the service of his country, only less valuable than that of 
"VVashiugton. 

George Washington scorned to grow rich from the public 
treasury. He freely gave his time to the country, accepting only 
jjayment for his actual outlays; although he had added a new 
power to the Governments of the world. Such was the proud, 
self-sacrificing spirit of the great Republicans who maintained 
the high character of the Government. 

Benlon, Clay, Jackson, Webster, Harrison, Scott, Prentiss, 
the statesmen, heroes, authors and early public men of America, 
were all i)Oor men, Avho had not large patrimonies. Such were 
the examplars of our liberty. 



76 CRIMES OP THE CIVIL AVAR. 

The Congressmen we elect leave us poor, sell their votes to 
Eastern capitalist, come home rich, prepared to buy up our lands 
when they are sold for taxes. Tiiey would gladly, keep the 
people cutting each others' throats — quarreling about other men's 
business ; whilst they sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. 
In all of the history of deliberative bodies, no more sorrowful 
exhibition of manhood has ever been made than the composition 
of the Thirty-ninth Congress. Schuyler Colfax says, " it was 
the ablest body of men that ever sat in Congress." I may be 
mistaken, but think not, when I declare it the most imbecile, 
corrupt and wicked deliberative body of men that ever spoke 
the English language. Tlie very evidence which so conclusively 
demonstrates the strength of this body to Mr. Colfax, is that 
which so conclusively establishes its weakness with everybody 
else — that he was elected its Speaker. "What a beautifnl specta- 
cle that would have been to see Henry Clay, or John Lcll, or 
Andrew Stevenson, traversing the country, whilst Spealcer of the 
House of Representatives, delivering a catch-penny lecture in the 
showman's style, at fifty cents a sight ! JNIr. Colfax is not a 
lawyer that any one ever heard of. He was once a minister, but of 
such insignificance as to be entirely unknown. He was an editor 
of a very obscure paper, which has not been extended in circu- 
lation by the weight of his office, ponderous as he conceives it. 
In that whole assembly of the Republican party, there was not 
one eminent lawyer, though it liad many lawyers. The first 
Cono-ressional District of Iowa furnishes the Chairman of the 
Judiciary, James F. Wilson, yet at every bar in the District 
there are much abler lawyers than Mr. AVilson. Mr. Wilson 
had never been engaged in a first-class civil case, nor a capital 
case ; and could not at liis peril carry a first-class case through 
all the courts successfully. In Ohio he was a very respectable 
saddler ; in Iowa, a county court lawyer and political trickster. 
The analysis miglit be extended, but we confine it to representa- 
tive men. The Republican party, who were very fully repre- 
sented by preachers, had not among their ministers one eminent 
pulpit orator, able theological controversalist, author, scholar or 
divine whose threiidbare harangues would not have worn out the 
patience of the most meek and submissive audience. I'erhaps 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 77 

the rakish and shallow Grinnell was the ablest of their divines. 
But Grimiell could not entertain an intelligent audience for an 
hour upon any topic; and with all of his shameless impudence, 
would scarcely venture a religious diatribe among the people of 
his own State, and surely could not sustain a congregation. 
About government he knows less than nothing; was flogged for 
his bad manners and deserted by his friends. The Republicans 
had generals and military officers in the Thirty-ninth Congress, 
but among their military officials there was not one distinguished 
character. Schenck was the recognized leader of this class, but 
Schcnck was the very weakest and most unfortunate of all the mili- 
tary men, where military men were chosen for their known inca- 
23acity in military affairs. For his butchery at Vienna, in a M'ell- 
regulated army, he would have been cashiered for his imbecility, 
or shot for his crime. His rule in Baltimore was the opprobrium 
of the war, which gave comparative respectability to Butler. 
There were among the remainder neither historians, ^Joets, nor 
philosophers ; and the only way in which they were estimated, 
was by the amount of money which it was supposed neces'sary to 
buy their votes. They were the offals of every profession. 
Among the lawyers, there was none such as Judge Black, Attor- 
ney-General Gushing, Charles O'Connor or Mr. Browning. 
Thaddeus Stevens, who was a successful advocate and rabble- 
rouser in early life, never pretended to, nor did his friends claim 
for him, the rank of the first lawyers of the State; as was award- 
ed to Buchanan, Boss, Sharswood, Forward, Woodward or Reed. 
Among the divines in this Congress, there were none such as 
Bishop Soule, of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; INIeade, of 
the Episcopal ; Fuller, of the Baptist ; or the abler Presbyterians 
of former times. Among the generals, there was none such as 
Scott, Jackson, Lee or Johnston. Never did a more wretched 
constituency of fanatics elect a representation of more arrant 
knaves and impracticable fools ; never was there such a hybrid 
cross between villainy and stupidity. They went to Congress 
poor ; came back rich. They were cunning villains, who, if ac- 
cepting bribes, knew how to cover up every trace of their wick- 
edness and corruption ; defy investigations, investigate their own 
rascality, and declare themselves acquitted. Stevens, the ablest. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



worst and wickedest of all, yet eschewing open bribes, liesitales 
not to tell his own constituency of the bribery in elections of 
both Representatives and Senators, of bribery, duplicity and cor- 
ruption in the votes which elected his colleague (Cameron), to 
the Senate. Our Congressmen grew prematurely rich. One 
only yesterday was a poor man, a schoolmaster and Methodist 
preacher. He now lives in a palatial mansion in AA^ashington 
city, and condescends to visit his home occasionally, to spend a 
few days in another magnificent baronage. Another was poor, 
never had heavy cases or large fees ; he is now President of a 
bank, and very wealthy. Both of these gentlemen were losing 
money on their salaries, and therefore excused themselves for 
adding two thousand dollars per annum to their former salaries. 
This is the history of the whole Congress. How did they make 
their money ? Where did they get their I'ank stock ? How did 
they get it? You must ask uianufacturers how they got their 
tariffs ; you must ask railroads how they got their lands ; that 
may give you light. Did these gentlemen take open bribes? 
Certainly not ; they are entirely too shrewd for all that. They 
saw other gentlemen in Congress get expelled for that folly. But 
liberal gentlemen always make presents to their friends. It is 
enough to know that your Congressmen are rich, and you are 
poor. Before they went to Congress, you were rich and they 
were poor. Something wrought the change. But they did not 
get enough to pay tlieir expenses — were actually losing money — 
and voted themselves four thousand dollars each, for past servi- 
ces, to pay expenses. But Avhere did they get the money ? I 
leave this for you to answer. One-half you make has been given 
to the manufacturer to pay tariffs. Could not the manufacturers 
afford to make presents to the men who presented them with at 
least half of all your earnings? The bondholder gets a heavy 
allowance. Could he notafford to make these gentlemen a present? 
The railroad companies get manors and millions of acres and bonds, 
through their votes. Could not they afford to divide out liber- 
ally with the voter? Steamships get contracts of immense pro- 
lit. Won't they contribute somewhat? Telegraph companies 
make fortunes. Won't they contribute to save a poor Congress- 
man from penury and want? This much, however, you know, 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 79 

that you pay taxes and are poor, and they receive salaries, paid 
•^vith your taxes, and are rich, and make bankers and manufac- 
turers ricli by their votes. These men, whose sworn duty is to 
maintain the public peace, after having sold their votes fur gain, 
fear the inquiry and investigation of the people, and cry offensive 
names of " copperhead, " " secesh, " " rebel, " &c., to avert the 
curses of the people from their own to the heads of others. So long 
as they could keep the country engaged in actual warfare, they had 
the most perfect immunity of murder, arson and robbery. Peace 
would promptly arrest their crime and their profit together. 
But unlike high-minded highwaymen, who rob only their ene- 
mies, these Congressmen rob their friends whilst they butcher 
their enemies, and leave devastation in their pathway, to attest 
their success in the prosecution of the pur^Doses of their ambition. 
In the present Congress you have no hope. The men who com- 
pose it have your ruin deliberated. They have sought the pub- 
lic treasury as a means of enriching their private purse. They 
have used the public sword to gratify their private personal mal- 
ice. They have employed the halls of Congress to defame the 
American .people, and have covertly prostituted every sacred 
principle of law and liberty, to elevate themselves upon a pedes- 
tal imbedded in the ashes of the Constitution, sprinkled with 
the blood of the people. Your only hope is in yourselves — 
your thorough, and complete, and compact organization ; in send- 
ing to represent you men of ability and integrity, who love lib- 
erty and fear God. 



80 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



CHAPTER X. 

The Corruption of Congress in Creating the Debt. 

The corruptions of Congress are alarming. The black mail, 
levied by political combination, to secure offices in the larger 
cities, threatens the entire overthrow of our political system. 

It is quite as notorious as infamous, that party nominations, 
equivalent to elections in the larger cities, cost immense sums of 
money ; sometimes the mayoralty of a city costs the candidates 
twenty to forty thousand dollars as a condition of nomination. 

And nearly every officer pays a tribute of his salary, and fees 
to the combinations from whom he secures his office. 

Twenty to fifty thousand dollars is regarded a necessity to the 
candidacy to Congress, and candidates secure it in the same way ; 
but not by the same honourable means that Englishmen secure 
positions in the army. 

Secretaries of the Executive Departments have been engaged 
in speculations that have secured them immense fortunes sudden- 
ly, and have scarcely concealed the evidence of their crime. 

The history of modern legislation is simply the details of cor- 
ruption, peculation, bribery and black mail, by which constit- 
uencies are divested of every guaranty of good government. 

These gentlemen indemnify themselves for outlays in voting 
millions, in exorbitant tariffs, in voting millions of acres in laud 
grants to corporations, in voting contractors' claims, hurried like 
lightning through committees, and passed without examination 
in the last hours through the House, when the President has 
scarcely time to read them. 

The manufacturers can well afford to pay millions to compen- 
sate for tens of millions dollars voted into their pockets ; nor 
would the corporations hesitate to hand over thousands of acres 
of the millions placed in their hands, and contractors willingly 
divided their spoils with their benefactors. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 81 

From tlie most pincliing want and obscure position, these 
gentlemen emerge into bank presidents, live in splendid houses, 
drive magnificent turnouts. Their families, covered with silks 
and jewelry, and living in oriental style, assume aristocratic 
airs. 

The Congressmen, not the people, premeditatedly provoked, 
perpetuated and would yet continue civil war, as a source of 
profit, power and position. 

This could only be done by the perpetration of frauds. 

The Congress still demand armies to overawe the people, and 
pretend that war exists, and demands armies that frauds be not 
discovered ; and if discovered, be not exposed ; and if any one 
dare expose them, that martial law be declared ; and any person 
testifying against them, may be arrested under any pretence 
whatever, tried by court martial, convicted without defence, and 
executed without the privilege of leaving their denial as a legacy 
to their families and to justice; at every stage of the proceedings 
deprived of the unquestionable rights of self-defence. 

For five years these flagrant murders and robberies have been 
carried to a startling extent, to rid guilty parties of the odium 
and punishment due to crime, in which members of Congress 
were partners with sutlers and commissioners of subsistence, 
holding a percentage in the profits of the business. 

Every encampment and army store-house burned, as carefully 
l)urned all books and accounts in a common ash heap. 

In this destruction of papers, the confusion of martial law, 
the corruptions of office and peculation, were kept from the pub- 
lic view. 

The votes of Congressmen were bought and sold in the mar- 
ket, as the service of cyprians. The price was regulated by 
the influence of the member and magnitude of the interest, or 
the pressing necessity of his vote. 

So well is the process of corruption understood, that each new 
member, is beset, by all the blandishments of power, assailing all 
the weaknesses of human nature. 

By money and other less reputable means, members of Con- 
gress were bribed to vote for the late Constitutional amendment, 
or absent themselves from their seats. 
6 



82 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Nearly every legislative outrage and usurpation is accomplished 
in the same way, Avhere money fails. Social and political posi- 
tions, is used as a part of the standard currency of corruption. 
Sometimes a great measure, that tenderly touches the destiny of 
the country, turns upon the secret embraces of an artful courte- 
zan, who holds at her will the character and social peace of some 
feeble member of Congress. At other times, a corrupted Con- 
gressman, with the wages of his iniquity in his pocket, will be 
seen stepping from the representative seat of a betrayed constit- 
uency, into the voluptuous court of a foreign despot, to revel in the 
price of his honor, and hide his shame in foreign lands. 

This Congressional corruption extended to the army, where it 
found new and richer fields of plunder. Army officers, without 
capacity, were appointed and promoted by contract. Superior 
officers sold their influence, to secure appointments and promo- 
tions of inferior officers. Heads of Departments of the general 
government levied black mail of their inferiors, to keep up style 
and promote the success of elections, until public offices have 
become matters of mercenary speculations, like bank, railroad, 
and other stock. 

The style in the invaded States is well explained in the follow- 
ing letter : 

A SOUVENIR OF SHERMAN's BUMMERS. 

The following letter, says the Columbus (Ga.) Sun and Times, 
was found in the streets of Columbia, immediately after the army 
of General Sherman had left. The original is preserved, and 
can be shown and substantiated, if anybody desires : 

Camp near Camden, S. C, Feb. 26, 1865. 

My Dear Wife — I have no time for particulars. AVe have 
had a glorious time in this State. Unrestricted license to burn 
and plunder was the order of the day. The chivalry have been 
stripped of most of their valuables. Gold watches, silver pitch- 
ers, cu])s, spoons, forks, &c., are as common in camp as blackber- 
ries. The terms of plunder are as follows : Each company is 
required to exhibit the results of its operations at any given 
place — one-fifth and first choice falls to the share of the com- 
mander-in-chief and staff; one-fifth to the corps commanders and 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 83 

staff; one-fifth to field officers of regiments, and two-fiftlis to the 
company. 

Officers are not allowed to join these expeditions without dis- 
guising themselves as privates. One of our corps commanders 
borrowed a suit of rough clothes from one of my men, and was 
successful in this place. He got a large quantity of silver 
(among other things an old-time milk pitcher) and a very fine 
gold watch from a Mrs. DeSaussure, at this place. DeSaussure 
was one of the F. F. V.'s of South Carolina, and was made to 
fork over liberally. Officers over the rank of captain are not 
made to put their plunder in the estimate for general distribu- 
tion. This is very unfair, and for that reason, in order to pro- 
tect themselves, subordinate officers and privates keep back every 
thing that they can carry about their jjersons, such as rings, ear- 
rings, breast pins, &c., of which, if I ever get home, I have 
about a quart. I am not joking — I have at least a quart of 
jewelry for you and all the girls, and some No. 1 diamond rings 
and pins among them. General Sherman has silver and gold 
enough to start a bank. His share in gold watches alone at Co- 
lumbia was two hundred and seventy-five. But I said I could 
not go into particulars. All the general officers and many be- 
sides had valuables of every description, down to the embroid- 
ered ladies' pocket handkerchiefs. I have my share of them, 

too. We took gold and silver enough from the d d rebels to 

have redeemed their infernal currency twice over. This, (the 
currency,) whenever we came across it, we burned, as we con- 
sidered it utterly worthless. 

I wish all the jewelry this army has could be carried to the 
" Old Bay State." It would deck her out in glorious style ; 
but, alas ! it will be scattered all over the North and Middle 

States. The d d niggers, as a general rule, prefer to stay at 

home, particularly after they found out that we only wanted the 
able-bodied men, (and, to tell you the truth, the youngest and 
best-looking women.) Sometimes we took off whole families 
and plantations of niggers, by way of repaying secessionists. 
But the useless part of them we soon manage to lose; sometimes 
in crossing rivers, sometimes in other ways. 

I shall write to you again from Wilmington, Goldsboro', or 
some other place in North Carolina. The order to march has 
arrived, and I must close hurriedly. Love to grandmother and 
aunt Charlotte. Take care of yourself and children. Don't 
show this letter out of the family. 
Your affectionate husband, 

Thomas J. Myers, Lieut., &c. 



84 CEIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 

P. S. I will send this by the first flag of truce to be mailed, 
unless I have an opportunity of sending it to Hilton Head. 
Tell Sallie I am saving a pearl bracelet and ear-rings for her; 
but Lambert got the necklace and breast-pin of the same set. 
I am trying to trade him out of them. These were taken from 
the Misses Jamison, daughters of the President of the South 
Carolina Secession Convention. We found these on our trip 
through Georgia. 

This letter was addressed to Mrs. Thomas J. Myers, Boston, 
Massachusetts. 

It need not be a matter of wonder how members buy their 
election to Congress, buy their nomination, live in grandeur, be- 
stow with munificence, defy the simplest laws of justice, and still 
return to the legislature halls to repeat their crimes. 

The government was robbed to fill the pockets of contractors, 
to furnish places to ambitious men ; to insult, punish, and de- 
grade those who exposed those crimes. 

The amount of public money squandered is incalculable. 

The history of wars is the biography of thieves, robbers and 
sharpers upon the one hand ; and of bankrupt, ruined, honest 
and silly men who were unfortunate enough to come in contact 
iwith them, upon the other hand. 

With Bonaparte and Alexander, Cyrus and Csesar, Charles 
XII and Peter the Great, Wellington and Washington, contract- 
ors and sutlers were accounted the value of armies. But in the 
late war these cormorants Avcre the living substance and most 
prominent elements of its existence. 

1. Contractors sold out their wares at enormous prices, and col- 
luded with officers, defrauded the government, by selling to the 
army damaged goods, dealing out rations with false weights and 
measures, selling broken wagons, cripj)led horses and mules, or col- 
luding with the public enemy to make sale of the same article 
many times. These vampires, Avho were generally partners of mem- 
bers of Congress, made princely fortunes, and are now spending 
their money in riotous living, revelling among harlots, dwell- 
ing in palaces gorged Avith viands, drunken with blood, reeking 
with corruption, and swaggering with self-importance. 

It required the open mouth of every drowning monster, the 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 85 

extravagance of every profligate public officer; the destroying 
torch of every incendiary, and the lavishment of government 
hirelings upon every vice, to sink this country into its present 
vortex of crime and debt. 

The details of this extravagance would fill libraries and fright- 
en the reader. 

The character of the crimes forbade their publication in the 
public journals under penalties visited upon obscene publications. 
The frauds, negligence, crimes and usurpations, embody a com- 
plete system reduced to a science, by collecting all of the tricks 
of trade, the pilferings of the camp, the horrors of the battle- 
field, the corruptions of government and the usurpations of power 
into one thoughtfully revised and thoroughly digested code of 
crime, directed against the people under the supervision of the 
government. 

I cite the example of that prodigy of imbecility, pretension ■ 
and failure, Maj. Gen. John Charles Fremont, and take but a 
few random passages from thousands of pages of the most trans- 
jDarent corruption. 

The bribes exacted of contractors were private, shameful, and 
extravagant. 

The frauds on the Quartermaster's Department were numer- 
ous, and extended through all branches under his control and 
supervision. 

In the purchase of horses, the government paid $119.50 per 
liead for 1000. The contractor's agent, who is approved by the 
quartermaster, had charge of the field where the horses were 
to pass examination. 

The farmer who sold horses to the government, paid ten dollars 
entrance fee to the agent ; he then paid another ten dollars fee to 
their atJ-ent for their recommendation to the contractor, who intimi- 
dates the purchaser and buys them at the very lowest figure of $85 
to $90, when horses outside were selling at much higher fig- 
ures. In this way these contractors, dividing the plunder with 
the quartermasters, made independent fortunes. 

One of the government inspectors was a discharged convict of 
the Kentucky penitentiary. 

With such arrangements, with a few good horses, they filled 



86 CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAE. 

the remainder of the contracts with broken doAvn stage, street, 
car and omnibus horses, which fell dead on the road. Dead 
horses were lying around the depot where they had been kept. 
The contractor would buy up these broken-down nags, trot them 
out full of bran, and peppered, and sold with an understanding, 
at $115 to $130. First-class hoi'ses were at the same time reject- 
ed and denounced, to prevent them from being branded. Ignor- - 
ant countrymen would sell the rejected horBes at low prices; and 
the same agent who had rejected them, would afterwards accept 
them, and the contractor would place them in his complement to 
give character to the remainder of his damaged stock. 

In wagons the frauds was adroitly managed between the con- 
tractor and the government agent. 

The army would press the wagons into the service, and the 
contractor present his claim, which was promptly paid, and the 
profits shared between them. 

Most of these wagons were unfit for service ; the axles, reach, 
bolsters, spokes, hubs, &c., were cracked, and the cracks filled 
with leather and putty, and painted over where the fraud was 
apparent : these wagons soon broke down and all were worth- 
less. 

Eleven fortifications were built, when the actual cost was not 
more than $10,000; the amount claimed by contractors was 
$300,000. Out of the enormous fraud the laborers did not re- 
ceive their wages, for which they clamored at the government 
office. 

Fremont rented the magnificent mansion of Mrs. Col. Brant, 
the cousin of his wife, at $6,000 per annum. His staff lived in 
a style of like magnificence, in the finest mansions in the neigh- 
borhood. 

Spacious and extravagant barracks, sufficient for the accom- 
modation of 2,500 men, were erected for Fremont's body-guard 
of 600 men. 

The whole building of Benton's barracks cost $150,000. The 
contract was obtained by bribery, filled fraudulently and accept- 
ed Avith complicity in the fraud ; and about $75,000 divided 
among the jobbers and inspectors. 

Camp kettles, picket pins, oats, clothing, blankets, transporta- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 87 

tion tickets, tag-boats ; paying hands in uncurrent funds, and 
drawing the amount in government money, were all the sources 
of profits and pretexts for fraud. 

Equipped in the style of the Chinese Emperor, surrounded 
by California thieves, Fremont secluded himself from the pub- 
lic gaze ; whilst his drmies were defeated, and no one dared ap- 
proach him, and his contractors were speculating upon his seclu- 
sion. 

This certificate illustrates the modus operandi: 

Camp Sullivan, Warsaw, Oct. 21, 1861. 

To Col. Wm. Bishop : 

The undersigned having been summoned as Board of Survey, 
to examine and inspect the condition of the horses forwarded to 
this regiment from St. Louis, and report that we have examined 
said horses and find seventy-six fit for service, five dead and 
three liundred and thirty under size, under and over-aged, stifled, 
ring bone, blind and incurable, unfit for any public service, said 
horses being a part of the Missouri contract. 
Very respectfully, 

David McKee, Major, 
George Rockwell, Captain, 
John Schee, Lieutenant. 

United States District Attorney Jones was associated with 
Messrs. Thompson and Bowen, in the purchase of horses and 
mules. Their contract was at $110,80 per head. Bowen sold 
out to Thompson and Jones for $5,000, in bankable funds. 
Thompson went to INIcKinstry for payment on horses, ISIessrs. 
Thompson and Jones had furnished, and was told that " another 
party was interested in these horses, and unless the |5,000 was 
deducted by Messrs. Thompson and Jones, none of the money 
could be paid." The $5,000 was kept by McKinstry, and the 
remainder paid over to Thompson and Jones. 

Over $500,000 were taken from the government in hay con- 
tracts. By the same collusion, between the contractor and 
quartermaster, $17,50 was paid for rough Prairie hay, with 
$8,00 i)er ton for transportation from St. Louis to Sedalia, when 
the same quality could have been bought anywhere along the 
route to Warsaw for $6,00 to $8,00 per ton. 



88 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

In such grandeur of style did Fremont surround himself, and 
such was the complicated machinery that was necessary to his 
approach, that no one could reach him with communications. 

No earthly personage, except the "Grand Llama," ever 
assumed such dignity and reserve from the highest to the lowest 
government officials ; all participated in his dignity and were 
implicated in these crimes, and profited by these speculations 
which originated in Congress. Every corrupt congressman had 
a political general, with corresponding numbers of subordinates, 
the creatures of his power. This list shows some of the uses 
made of the money that made the public debt. 

"general officers without commands. 

Secretary Stanton on AVcdncsday sent to the Senate the names 
of Major Generals and Brigadier Generals without commands 
equal "to a brigade ; the number of their staffs, their pay, com- 
mutations and rations, and the INIajor and Brigadier General in 
command of departments and districts, together with his opinion 
if they were needed. The pay is monthly pay : 

Officers of the Regular Army and of Volunteers, together xoith 
their respective staffs, without commands, or commands equal to 
a brigade : 

George B. INIcClellan, Major General, $355 ; relieved Nov. 
7, 1862. No staff. 

John C. Fremont, INIajor General, $355 ; relieved August 12, 
18G2. Staff— Anseline Albert, Colonel, $1G4; John T. Flain, 
Colonel, $164; Charles Zagonyi, Colonel, $164; John Pilson, 
Lieutenant Colonel, $146 ; Leonidas Haskell, Major, $110; R. 
W. Eaymond, Captain, $104. 

r>avid Hunter, Major General, $355; relieved June 12, 1863. 
No staff. On a tour of inspection through military division of 
the Mississipjii. 

E. A. Hitchcock, Major General, $445 ; has had no command or 
staff". Commissioner for exchange of prisoners. 

Irwin McDowell, Major General, $445; relieved September 6, 
1862. President of a retiring board since July 12, 1863. Staff — 
Franklin Haven, jr.. Captain, $129.50, Recorder for Retiring 
Board; ^yiadislis 'Leski, Captain, $129.50; J. DeW. Cutting, 
Captain, $127.50. 

W. S. Rosecrans, Major General, $445; relieved October 19, 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 89 

1863; F. S. Bond, Major, $163; Chas. R. Thompson, Captain, 
$120.50; R. S. Thorns, Captain, $120.50. 

Don Carlos Buell, Major General, $355 ; relieved October 30, 

1862. No staif. 

John A. McClernand, Major General, $355 ; relieved June, 

1863. No staff. 

Lewis Wallace, Major General, $445 ; relieved Nov. 16, 1862 ; 
on Court-martial duty until November 5, 1863. No statf. 

General Cadwallader, Major General, $445; relieved from a 
command equal to a brigade, August 16, 1862; commanding 
post at Philadelphia since^July 18, 1862. Staff— I. Harwoocl, 
First Lieutenant Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers, 
$119.50. 

E. O. C. Orel, Major General, $456 ; relieved October 28, 
1863, on account of sickness. Has since gone to join his army 
corps.. 

Samuel P. Heintzelman, Major General, $445 ; relieved Oct. 
13, 1863. President of General Court-martial in Washington, 

D. C. Members of his staff serving with Major General Augur. 
ErastusD. Keyes, Major General, $445 ; relieved July, 1863. 

No staff. Member of Retiring Board at Wilmington, Delaware. 

A. McD. McCook, Major General, $445 ; relieved October 9, 
1863. Staff— Caleb Bates, Major, $163; E. D. Williams, 
Captain, $129.50; F. J. Jones, Captain, $129.50. 

T. L. Crittenden, Major General, $445 ; relieved October 9, 
1863. Staff— L. M. Buford, Major, $129.50; J. J. McCook, 
Captain, $129.50; G. G. Knox, Captain, $129.50. 

Daniel E. Sickles, Major General, $445; relieved July 3, 
1863, severely wounded at Gettysburg — lost a leg. Staff — H. 

E. Tremaine, Major, $163 ; Alexander IMoore, Captain, $129 50. 
R. H. Milroy, Major General, $355; relieved June 20, 1863. 

No staff. 

A. Doubleday, Major General, $445; relieved July 1, 1863, 
wounded; on court-martial duty. Staff — P. Martin, First 
Lieutenant Forty-seventh New York Volunteers, $119 50; H. 
T. Lee, First Lieutenant Fourth New York Artillery, $119 50. 

R. J. Oglesby, Major General, $355 ; relieved July 17, 1863. 
No staff. 

Geo. L. Hartsuff, Major General, $445 ; relieved Oct. 3, 1863. 
Ordered before Retiring Board. Staff— E. O. Brown, Major, 
$163; J. M. Howard, Captain, $129 50; Samuel A. Russell, 
Captain, $129 50. 

Andrew Porter, Brigadier General, $232 ; relieved in July, 
1862. No staff. 



90 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

T. ^Y. Sherman, Brigadier General, $232 ; relieved May 27, 
1863 ; severely wounded at Port Hudson. No stafl'. 

William R. Montgomery, Brigadier General, ^229 50 ; re- 
lieved in June, 1862; comiuanding post of Philadelphia, Penn- 
sylvania, until March 11, 1863. Staff — J. H. Livingston, 
Lieutenant Seventh New Jersey Volunteers ; J. H. Montgomery, 
Lieutenant Thirteenth Pennsylvania Cavahy. 

James B. Eicketts, Brigadier General, ^229 50 ; relieved Nov. 
1862 ; • on Military Board to try officers iu \ya3liingtou. Staff — 
B. ^V. Eichard, $129 56. 

James S. Wadsworth, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; relieved 
July 17, 1862. Member of Court of Inquiry. Staff— H. 
Menelee, Major, $163; T. Ellsworth, Captain, $129 50. 

George W. Morrell, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; relieved in 
February, 1862. Commanding depot for drafted men at 
Indianapolis, Indiana. No staff. 

John J. Abercrombie, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved 
December 9, 1863, Staff — William N. Waterbury, First Lieu- 
tenant Fourth New York Artillery, $119 50. 

L. P. Graham, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved Aug. 19, 
1862. President Board of Examination of sick officers at 
Annapolis, Md. No staff, 

Willis A. Gorman, Brigadier General, $232 ; relieved June 
27, 1863. No staff. 

John G. Barnard, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; has had no 
command ; Chief Engineer of defenses of Washington. Staff — 
B. S. Alexander, Lieutenant-Colonel, $187 ; Assistant Engineer, 
F. R. Mouther, Captain, $129 50. 

John P. Hatch, Brigadier General, $229 50; relieved August 
30, 1863 ; wounded at second battle of Bull Run. Commanding 
cavalry depot at St. Louis, ]\Io. No staff. 

Alvin Schoepf, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; relieved Oct. 15, 
1862. Commanding Fort Delaware. No staff. 

George W. Cullom, Brigadier General, $299 50. Has had 
no command or. staff. Is chief of Gen. Halleck's staff. 

G. B. Tower, Brigadier General, $232 ; relieved August 31, 
1862; severely wounded at second Bull Run. No staff. 

L. G. Arnold, Brigadier General, $232 ; relieved May 23, 
1863 ; no staff; sick ; is ordered before Retiring Board. 

William S. Ivetchum, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; has had 
no command nor staff; on duty in War Department. 

Daniel Tyler, Brigadier General, $292 50 ; relieved June — , 
1863; is commanding district of Delaware; troops not equal to 
a brigade. Staff — E. L, Taylor, Second Lieutenant First Con- 
necticut Heavy Artillery. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 91 

R. B. :MitclielI, Brigadier General, $209 50 ; relieved October 
23, 1863, on generarCourt martial at Washington, D. C. No 
staif. 

E. R. S. Canb}^, Brigadier General, $209 50 ; relieved Septem- 
ber 10, 1863; on duty in War Department. No staff. 

Charles Devens, jr.. Brigadier General, $299 58; relieved 
May 26, 1863, on account of sickness; commanding depot for 
drafted men, Lovell's Island, Boston Harbor. Staff — D. W. 
Hughes, Captain, $129 50. 

Max Weber, Brigadier General, $209 50; relieved September 
17,1862; wounded. No staff. On general Court martial at 
Washington, D. C. 

Neal Dow, Brigadier General, $223 ; relieved May 27, 1863. 
No staff. Wounded and prisoner at Richmond, Va. 

Charles S. Greene, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; relieved Octo- 
ber 29, 1863. No staff. Badly wounded. On general Court 
martial at Washington, D. C. 

John Gibbon, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; relieved July 3, 
1863. Wounded in battle of Gettysburg. No staff. Com- 
manding depot for drafted men in Philadelphia. 

Charles Griffin, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved October 
23, 1863, on account of sickness. On general Court martial at 
Washington, D. C. 

Green Clay Smith, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved 
August 28, 1863. No staff'. Member of House of Represen- 
tatives. 

B. S. Roberts, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved Decem- 
ber 2, 1863, by General-in-Chief No staff*. 

Francis C. Barlow, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved July 
4, 1863. Wounded at battle of Gettysburg. No staff". 

Mason Brayman, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; relieved May 
31, 1863. Commanding Camp Dennlson, Ohio. Staff — C. B. 
Smith, First Lieutenant, Sixty-first Illinois Volunteers ; $119 50. 

N. J. Jackson, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved April 
17, 1863. No staff. Commanding depot for drafted men at 
Riker's Island, New York Harbor. 

F. B. Splnola, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved July 23, 
1863. Wounded. No staff". On reoruiting service at Brook- 
lyn, New York. 

Solomon JNIeredlth, Brigadier General, $290 50 ; relieved 
October 19, 1863. Absent on sick certificate. Staff — Samuel 
H. Meredith, First Lieutenant Nineteenth Indiana Volunteers, 
$119 50. 

H. B. Carrlngton, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; has had no 
command or staff; on duty with Governor of Indiana. 



92 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Wm. Hays, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved September 
16, 1863. Assistant Provost Marshal General Southern District 
of New York. No staif. 

Adam K. Slemmer, Brigadier General, $299 50; has had no 
command nor staif ; President of Board of Examination of Sick 
Officers, Cincinnati, Ohio, 

P. C. Pitcher, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; has had no com- . 
niand nor staff; assistant to Provost Marshal General at Brat- 
tlesborout:;h, Vermont, 

S, A, Meredith, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; has had no com- 
mand or staif; Agent for exchange of prisoners, 

E, W. Heath, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved March 
26, 1863 ; no staff; Commanding depot for drafted men. Con- 
cord, New Hampshire. 

Wm. W. Orme, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; relieved August 
31, 1863 ; no staff. Commanding at Chicago, Illinois, 

J. T, Copeland, Brigadier General, $299 50 relieved July 
14, 1863 ; no staff". Commanding depot for drafted men at Pitts- 
burg, Pennsylvania. 

S. G. Chaplin, Brigadier General, $299 50; has no command 
nor staff". Commanding depot for drafted men at Grand llapids, 
Michigan. 

T, A. Rowley, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; relieved July 3, 
1863; wounded at battle of Gettysburg. Commanding depot 
for drafted men at Portland, Maine. No staff. 

Charles T. Campbell, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved 
July, 30, 1863; no staff'. On general Court martial at Milwau- 
kee, Wisconsin, 

H. E. Paine, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved July 3, 
1864; lost a leg at Port Hudson. On general Court martial at 
Washington, D, C. No staff: 

G. R. Paul, Brigadier General, $299 50; relieved July 8, 
1863; severely wounded at Gettysburg, and nearly blind. No 

staff". 

Robert Allen, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; has had no com- 
mand nor staff. Chief Quartermaster Department of the West. 

D. H. Rucker, Brigadier General, $299 50 ; has had no com- 
mand nor staff". Chief Depot Quartermaster at Washington, 
D. C. 

Recapitulation. — Number of INIajor Generals without com- 
mand equal to brigade, 29 ; number of Brigadier Generals, 47 ; 
number of staff" officers serving on the staffs of general officers 
without a command equal to a brigade : Colonels, 3 ; Lieu- 
tenant Colonels, 2; Majors, 7; Captains, 17; Lieutenants, 9. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 93 

Total monthly pay of IMajor Generals, $8,340 ; total monthly 
pay of Brigadier Generals, $13 671 50; total monthly pay of 
Colonels, $490 ; total monthly pay of Lieutenant Colonels, $337 ; 
total monthly pay of Majors,"$l,694 ; total monthly pay of Cap- 
tains, $2,179; total monthly pay of Lieutenants, $1,070 50. 
Total, $5,161 50. Grand total, $27,193. 

jSTumber of Major and Brigadier Generals, Command- 
ing Departments, Districts and Posts. — Departments — 
Major Generals, 4; Brigadier Generals, 4. Districts — Major 
Generals, 2; Brigadier Generals, 7. Posts — Major Generals, 
1 ; Brigadier Generals, 14. Total : Major Generals, 7 ; Briga- 
dier Generals, 25. 

This list does not include Major Generals Couch, Brooks, 
Stahl, Sigel and others in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, in com- 
mand of camps, and on apparently nominal duties. Their staffs 
will swell the list and exhibit an immense expenditure of public 
money." 

The Generals rioting at the public expense is but an item. 
Hale, of New Hampshire, declared in the Senate that, $170,000, 
000 had been uselessly (he might have added and corruptly) 
spent in the construction of vessels. This was squandered upon 
political friends. 

In St. Louis the treasury is robbed outright of $280,000. 

Every Congressman provides for his sons, brothers, and neph- 
ews. $24,000 for one electioneering campaign. 

The contingent expenses of the House applied for like purpose, 
$110,902,19. 

Two bags of gold, containing $6,700, stolen from, the Custom 
House, Philadelphia. 

Charles H. Cornwall, head of redemption bureau, has been 
purloining treasury notes instead of destroying them. Many 
millions of dollars have passed through his hands to be destroyed : 
no one knows the amount purloined. 

Millions of dollars' worth of government stores were sold to 
Confederate sutlers, speculators and contractors, the price of 
which was pocketed by quartermasters. 

Frauds perpetrated by Surgeon General Hammond, in the 
purchase of blankets and beef, &c. 

Frauds upon the New York Custom House. 



94 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Blockade running by official connivance, with all of the crimes 
of treason, embezzlement and defalcation. 

Cheating the government in buying turpentine and other 
articles at low, and putting them at exorbitant prices. 

Using public stores for private purposes. 

In packing thousands of barrels of stone in saw dust, marked 
" corn beef" and " mess pork," landing them at some point 
of imminent danger, and burn it up to prevent it from falling 
into the hands of the enemy, at once securing the price of their 
sham meats, and obliterating the traces of villainy in the destruc- 
tion of the stores. 

The quartermasters had a system so generally adopted, that 
they dare not expose each other. 

The superior officers were so Avell sweetened with spoils, they, 
in like manner, were deterred from complaint to the Department. 

The quartermaster would report forage never fed, rations never 
ate, transportation never used. 

It was the opprobrium of the nineteenth century that the pris- 
oners of Camps Douglas, in Chicago; and Chase, in Columbus" 
Fort Delaware, Johnson's Island ; and every other prison, died 
by thousands, for the want of food, withheld by quartermasters, 
who appropriated the money in commutation to themselves. 
Such was this fraud upon human life, that prisoners' gums were 
sore, their teeth dropping out, their faces emaciated, their tongues 
parched, their limbs paralyzed by starvation. 

Although the government had paid the rations due them, such 
was the systematic fraud and unquenchable thirst for gain, that 
no suffering could arouse their sympathy, no horror could appal 
their senses, and no barbarity could stimulate these wicked men 
to shame or remorse. 

The quartermaster cheated the government in his official re- 
turns. He cheated the farmer and planter of whom he bought 
his provisions, in the weights, measures, exaction of his price, 
and if possible, plundered it under the pretext of confiscation. 
He finally cheated the soldier in the issue of his rations, and 
murdered both prisoners and soldiers, by the substitution of de- 
leterious compositions for Avholesome food and poisonous drugs 
for medicines. His official life was a perpetual series of cheats 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 95 

and frauds, impositions and oppressions. The sutler exceeded, 
if possible, the villainies of the quartermaster, availing himself 
of the soldier's necessity and absence from stores and supplies; 
would charge him a thousand per cent, upon the market value 
of the necessaries of camp life, tempt his last farthing by shame- 
fully perverting his appetite with villainous rum, and filch it 
from his pocket, Avhich was due to his destitute family at home. 
The contractor, who supplied the immediate wants of the army, 
received his contract as a personal and political favor, often 
with the distinct understanding, that he might rob the govern- 
ment at discretion. Without compunction he furnished the 
government with shoddy clothes, ill-made shoes and such rations 
as were refused at the regular markets, and entered into the gen- 
eral system of robbery and murder. The war was made the 
occasion and the apology for every imaginable species of fraud. 



96 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



CHAPTEE XI. 

Driving the Poor into the Meshes of the Flesh Dealers and Blood 

Market. 

No part of our eventful history leaves so dark a shadow upon 
our blood-stained escutcheon as that of the flesh dealers of the 
late war. Human ingenuity, never at fault in the vast variety 
of her inventions, was on the alert at the outbreak of the war to 
induce the jjoor to enter the army. The popular mind was 
wrought up to an artificial phrenzy. The manufacturers agreed 
with the bankers to assist the politicians to force men into the 
army. All business was susjiended ; the laboring masses thrown 
out of employment, bread riots threatened the peace of the cities, 
and general terror spread throughout the populace. 

At a given signal the mercenary ecclesiastical politicians broke 
loose in their Sabbath-day harangues to inflame the passions and 
prepare the public mind for civil war. Simultaneously all of 
the places of amusement, pleasure, revelry and crime followed 
the hue and cry. Recruiting sergeants went out among the 
starving rabble to gather up an army. Billy Wilson and 
his regiment of tatterdemalions, paraded up before Plymouth 
Church, to receive the benediction of its infidel pastor, who took 
his position for blood, and was followed by thousands of the mer- 
cenary clergy on the mission of plunder. These gentlemen 
opened their pulpits and portrayed to the poor the startling alter- 
native of enlistment or starvation. They hurled their horrible 
anathemas, and made their absurd charges against the Southern 
people. They appealed to the people to fly to arms in defence 
of their homes, which were neither invaded nor threatened with 
invasion ; to fight for liberty, which had not been endangered 
except by the usurpers who were demanding their services to 
overthrow all liberty ; to fight for self-government, whicli they 
were themselves destroying ; to fight for the Union, which they 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 97 

were pledged to dissolve ; to fight to preserve the peace, har- 
mony, strength and glory of the country, by destroying the foun- 
dations of society. 

These absurdities were taken up by the press and repeated on 
the rostrum, and became a part of the standard literature of the 
day. The manufacturers closed up their mills, sold out their 
operatives to the recruiting sergeant, under pretense of encourag- 
ing the war, out of which they could build up a monopoly. 
Merchants refused credit to the poor, to drive them into the 
army, that they might more readily sell their goods. Capitalists 
joined in the general clamor for war, that they might put the 
country under bonds and own the people. 

Such was the death-dealing coalition which withheld employ- 
ment from the artizan, laborer and dependent poor of the cities 
and crowded rural districts. A brief period of idleness drove 
the people to want and beggary. Idleness and precarious living 
prepared the people for anything that jDromised bread. Every 
manner of argument was used, and every kind of bait was held 
out, as an inducement to the poor to rush to the army — to fight 
the battles of plunder for the rich. 

To these absurdities were added barefaced falsehoods, to mis- 
lead the ignorant and delude the unwary. 

Under this terrible pressure the first call to arms was soon 
filled. To facilitate recruiting, designing leaders made feigned 
provisions for the families of enlisted soldiers, which for a time 
were paid with some jjromptitude. The local family bounties 
were doled out in slow and stinted payments, and soon discon- 
tinued altogether. The sufferings of the families of the soldiers 
were extreme, and induced many pitiful and threatening demon- 
strations — among others, the most formidable in New York, in 
1863, when the poor, in self-defense, without leaders, system or 
purpose, in the spontaneous madness inspired by the injustice 
suifered from heartless tyrants, broke out into indiscriminate 
burning, pillage and destruction — wasted their strength and 
ruined their cause. 

Early in the second year of the war, it assumed a purely mer- 
cenary character, stimulated by the hopes of plunder. The pub- 
lic morality was undermined, licentiousness reigned to an extent 
7 



98 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

witliout parallel or precedent among ws, the recital of wliicli is 
forbidden by decency. Thieves, bnrglars and liighwaymen in- 
fested every part of the country. 

The three -worst classes of men were let loose ^vithout restraint 
upon society. Deserters from the Federal army, vho had no 
means of support, dared not return home, and, unable to escape 
to foreign lands, vere compelled to seek subsistence and forage 
clandestinely, alike off friend and foe, if such persons may be 
said to have friends ; deserters from the Confederate army, who 
had not manhood to defend their homes, families, and burning 
country, irom Tartarian desolation ; and whining refugees, who 
had adopted the South as their home, participated in the govern- 
ment, and assisted to inflame the civil war, and then fled to the 
Northern States to put their persons and opinions up at public 
sale to the highest bidder; bounty jumpers and professional 
mercenaries. This last and most respectable of these three clas- 
ses, made fortunes by accepting bounties, then deserting, then 
re-enlisting — travelling in gangs from place to place under the 
superintendence of shrewd leaders. These mercenaries would 
change their clothes, color their hair, shave their whiskers, and 
make all other external changes necessary to jn-event their detec- 
tion. Some of these nnfortunate fellows were executed, but this 
seemed only to stimulate enterprise in others. The more the 
currency depreciated the higher the bounty; the greater the 
bounty the greater the competition to obtain it. Thousands of the 
vagrant rabble of Canada came over to receive the premium 
offered upon human life, and bore their treasure safely off, chuck- 
lino- over the discomfiture of the poor Americans who were 
driven by draft after draft to fill quotas at enormous expense, 
who were no better off at the conclusion than in the beginning 
of the conscription. 

Confederate soldiers who had escaped from Northern prisons 
and fled for refuge to Canada, pinched by the rigid climate, 
anxious to return to their people, seeing no other manner of 
escape, enlisted in the Federal army, took the bounty, and fled 
to their old regiments in the Confederate service, bearing off the 
spoils of plunder, with such intelligence as opportunity afforded, 
doino- double and more effectual good to their cause than they 
could have done in any other branch of the service. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 99 

Thousands of enlisted soldiers, having first entered the army 
without bounty, became excited over the bounty mania, and 
eno-ao-ed in bounty-jumping. They would leave the ranks at 
every available opportunity, re-enlist and take the bounty. 
Sometimes, in traveling several hundred miles, Avhole companies 
Avould disperse through the connivance of officers, re-enlist several 
times, take bounties and share the spoils liberally with their 
delinquent commanders. This mercenary spirit spread throughout 
every part of the army like a contagion. The soldiers cauglit 
the infection until the army became a reckless, mercenary mob, 
or unfortunate conscripts driven to the slaughter. 

The bounty given to the soldiers gave rise to a new class of 
speculators, and a new^ traffic, unknown to the Christian world. 
These dealers in human flesh became masters of the blood market, 
and were the exact counterpart of the bounty-j umpers. At every 
corner of the streets were posted on the cellar-doors and stairway 
entrances, such advertisements as the following : " The highest 
price paid for Substitutes y" " Substitutes bought and sold hcreJ' 
This flagrant and abominable traffic was carried on in the streets. 
The blood-brokers made from two to five hundred dollars on the 
sale of one human being to the butcher stalls, just as body- 
snatchers make fortunes in exhuming corpses from the grave or 
stealing them from the dead-house. In all this carnival there 
was no voice raised to defend the outraged rights of the poor. 
The war was making the rich richer, which could only be ac- 
complished by making the poor poorer. The churches grew 
more gaudy,, the theatres more profligate, amusements more li- 
centious, the people more extravagant, bankers more ostentatious, 
the lawless more reckless, and all business less and less responsible. 
The poor had no friends. It was a crime to be poor. 

" Long, long labor, little rest ; 
Still to toil, to be oppressed ; 
Drained by taxes of liis store, 
Punished next for being poor; 
This is the poor wretch's lot, 
Born within the straw-roofed cot." 

They were drafted into the army, bought and sold upon the 
auction blocks like beasts of the field. Never before did such a 
pitiless storm rain its vengeance down upon the devoted heads 



100 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

of tlie people as that which fell upon the helpless classes subject 
to militaiy duty. Large families were as carefully picked as 
droves of cattle, separating those fatted for the butcher's stall 
from the herd. The children of widows who were unable to 
exert a strict control over the older male members of their fam- 
ilies, just entering into manhood at a time when they could have 
supported their bereaved parent, were hurried off to the flesh 
market. The husbands of poor women who were barely able 
to struggle against the hungry wolf of starvation, were caught 
in this man-trap. When drafted, men were driven from home 
at the point of the bayonet, black and white chained together 
like felons ; on the same day you would read in flaming placards : 
" The conscripts went singing and cheerful on their way." After 
the press, the natural guardian of Liberty, joined with the min- 
istry, the trustees of the virtue of the world, to delude the 
masses into the army, the work was accomplished. For each 
recruit obtained fifteen dollars was given as a premium. The 
pitiful cries of children, clinging to their father, whose face 
they were looking upon for the last time ; the plaintive appeal 
of thei^oor woman frantically begging the release of her husband, 
never moved a muscle in the brazen faces of the hardened 
wretches engaged in this nefarious business. 

The unscrupulous flesh-broker added to the bounty, whiskey 
highly seasoned with inflammatory drugs, to stultify the senses. 
In this condition the unfortunate creature was readily dragged 
from his family, and the cries of wife and children drowned by 
the sound of the fife and drum. 

The degradation of society was consummate. Parents might 
be seen selling their children in the conscript market, and 
walking complacently away with the price of their own blood 
in their pocket. Since the destruction of Jerusalem, where 
women cooked and ate their own offspring, no such revolting 
traffic had been known among a Christian people. The condition 
of the recruiting service was the unerring thermometer which 
indicated the depraved moral state of the atmosphere. These 
recruiting stations were kept in the dens of drunkenness, in 
back rooms with by-way entrances, where military officers in 
every stage of inebriety, from the silly chatter to the delirium 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 101 

tremens, with comjilcte control of the bar-room and its inmates, 
were turning human beings into demons to send to the army 
from this pandemonium. 

Gambling hells were called into requisition — located in dark 
cellars'or remote places, out of the public gaze. The bounty- 
broker, if not an expert in the science of the thieving games, 
would soon have one ready to strip the victim of everything, so 
that he would gladly seek refuge in the army to hide his mis- 
fortune and shame together. Houses of ill-fame were darkened 
by heavy blinds, and the young men from the country enticed 
into their meshes, and through chicanery, driven to desperation, 
sought solace in a mercenary warfare, where they might forget 
their shame in battle and replenish their purses by plunder. 
False charges of crime against innocent men were trumped up. 
The accused, to rid himself of the traps of perjury prepared for 
his destruction, choosing the army only in preference to the 
State's prison, was forced to enlist. Only the hyenas Avho live 
on human flesh, and the jackals who hounded up the prey for 
the lions in this shameful traffic, practiced their revolting busi- 
ness in the public gaze. As a horrible exhibition of the lower- 
ing condition of public morals, this work was accepted as a 
matter of course, and was apologized for by those who dare not 
justify its crime. It is due to mankind, and the civilization of 
the world, that these crimes be made public, that the frightful 
condition of American morals should alarm the whole family of 
man and frighten them away from this horrible path. 

Everything conspired to degrade society. The conscription 
bill was the finishing stroke of the bloody crime of usurpation, 
and wrought an entire change in our institutions. It was the 
first attempt in our history to work a complete despotism. As 
far back in the history of the Britons as the time when the great 
Julius Cffisar was driven back to his scattered fleet and expelled 
from the island by the undisciplined forces of Casselbelan, the 
military service was voluntary, and in Rome slaves were not 
allowed to bear arms. Conscription is unknown in Great 
Britain, and an attempt to conscript would cost the sovereign 
both throne and head at the same righteous blow. 

Men were indiscriminately pi'essed into the army, without re- 



102 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

gard to the protection of age. Tlie rulers exhibited a want of 
foresight not common. The woodsman provides for the second 
growth of the forest Avhich his deadly axe is felling to the 
earth, — the farmer is carefnl to preserve his seed-grain, — the 
herdsman looks after his growing stock, which shall succeed the 
sires and dames now driven to the butcher's stall; — but these 
monsters of despotism set all the laAvs of production at defiance 
in raising their armies, as tliey had hitherto scoffed at the sim- 
plest laws of justice in the administration of the government. 
Every male human being between the ages of twenty and forty- 
five, except those who might be exempted by the whims or bri- 
bery of the surgeon, Avere swept into the army. These surgeons 
for the most part M-ere a grave burlesque upon the medical pro- 
fession, who seemed to have no errand into the world except to 
disgrace the science of arras and the arts of war. They were 
superannuated quacks, M'ho had retired before aspiring midwivcs 
from the profession. They were, with rare exceptions, country 
and cily doctors, without practice at a time when and in commu- 
nities where, the services of good physicians were in great de- 
mand. They were brawling politicians in their immediate 
neio-hborhoods. Thev could be seen sitting from breakfast until 
dinner, and immediately after dinner to resume their seats in the 
exact position which they had left on the counter of the country 
store, or just as faithfully occupying the stranger's warm corner 
in the village tavern, during the long winters, asking imperti- 
nent questions of travelers, until their names were liistoric in the 
annals of neighborhood scandals. These gentlemen would break 
the monotony of life and embellish the general usefulness of their 
career by entertaining half-grown boys, strong-minded Avomen 
and feeble-minded men Avith speeches at the nearest school-house 
or cross-roads. They M'ould stuff ballot-boxes, intimidate 
voters, and engineer neighborhood slanders. You could sec 
them, on the sultry days of a long, lonesome, idle summer, re- 
treating with the approach of the sun from one side to the other, 
in the shade of the same village tavern enlivened with their 
Avinter haunt. They wore cross-barred breeches, shingled hair 
and military hat — Canada whiskers and paper shirt-collars. 
They had patiently waited for coming events, and, to their own 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 103 

surprise, found themselves floating on the floodtide of prosperity. 
Every dog shall have his day, and their time had come. They 
were, of all others, the very men for promotion. They coukl 
discuss the topics of the day with a narrow volubility which 
commended them to the authorities. Such was the specimen 
average of the great mass of men who volunteered their services, 
and were chosen to break up flimilies, in their capacity as ex- 
amining surgeons. 

Such were the men composing the examining boards, before 
whom the unfortunate conscript was placed for approval — a 
compliment after which he did not seek. 

The whole military strength subject to draft was duly recorded 
and examined, either before or after the conscription. They 
called it conscription ; — in the consummation of the tyranny they 
cast off all dissemblance, which was no longer necessary to their 
purpose. The names of men were cast into the lottery of death, 
which dealt out its unwelcome tickets to nearly every household. 
The reigning spirit of fraud forced itself into the Provost Marshal's 
office, and took entire possession of the draft. Provost IMarshals 
amassed immense fortunes, through agencies of exemption, which 
contracted to free the citizens from the fatal draft of the conscript 
wheel. This, like all other villainies of the Departments, was 
reduced to a clearly-defined system. Tickets intended for po- 
litical enemies, or military victims, or those who had not been 
able to buy themselves off, were written and dried with ordinary 
blotting paper, whilst the tickets intended for political friends 
were heavily sanded on a full, heavy hand of ink. The sand 
remaining on the paper, made them readily distinguishable from 
the other tickets on the slightest touch. To cover up the ap- 
jicarance of fraud, the drawing was performed by blind men, 
who, being first handsomely bribed and duly let into the secret, 
could each time bring forth the ticket of the doomed man. 
Such was the villainy and revenge that ruled the chances of 
death in the horrible conscription which forced unwilling men to 
perpetrate the awful crime of murder against brave men who 
were defending their homes from conflagration, their beds from 
violation, and their hearths from the stain of innocent blood. 

After his endorsement by the Provost Marshal, as chosen by 



104 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

the Government, he was placed in close care of the surgeon; 
The jirst introduction he had to this professional gentleman was 
in his native nakedness, for the most thorough, critical and in- 
solent examination. In the rural districts, the examination was 
generally in rooms exposed by the windows and other apertures 
to the public gaze, making amusement for the crowd outside 
watching and jeering, which was done to deter the timid from 
submission to examination at all. When the performance com- 
menced, the unfortunate victim stood pale as death — trembling 
like an aspen leaf in an autumn storm. The surgeon, with a 
coarse grin, would lift the upper lip, put his forefinger into his 
mouth and examine the teeth, just after the manner of the horse- 
jockey examining his nag — making the conscript walk, trot and 
kick in truly equine style — then lift up his hand and cough, 
subject to unnameable indignities at the discretion of the surgeon, 
until the crowd was fully satisfied with their victim. He was ' 
then removed to make way for new subjects, who in succession 
followed each other. After this examination was concluded, it 
did not by any means follow tliat the conscript Mas either held 
or freed, according to the condition of his health or qualification 
for the service. The question of his qualification was determined 
by entirely irrelevant considerations. If he was a relative or 
personal friend, or could buy off, he was generally accounted 
safe. On the other hand, if a personal enemy, or poor, all ef- 
forts at exemption were more than thrown away. The exemption 
board was a very powerful engine of political power. Thousands 
were exempted as the price of their votes at the coming elec- 
tion. 

As soon as the recruit was accepted as fit for service, the flesh 
ghoul was ready to buy him for enlistment. 

These narrow-minded politicians made the examining board 
a fruitful source of gratification of hate, spite, and an immense 
revenue. Tiiousands of able-bodied men, in the vigor of life, 
and fulness of strength, were exempted, whilst many poor men 
who had never been fit for any military duty whatever, \yere 
drao-oed to the army, or died on the way. A most painful instance 
occurred, in which the unfortunate conscript, Avho was rudely hur- 
ried through the examination and approved by the brutal surgeon, 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 105 

took a fit of coughing and bled to death in the room where he 
was examined. Hundreds who had been exempted, boasted in 
the streets that their political opinions had secured their exemp- 
tion. The partizans declared their determination to conscript all 
those who believed the war a crime. This became a matter of 
grave reflection. Many believed it a crime to go to wra- at all ; 
a greater crime to destroy the right of self-government in making 
war on those who defended it ; a still greater crime to butcher 
their own kindred ; an enormous offense to burn up the homes 
and fields, desecrate the churches, break down the enclosures 
and monuments of the dead of a Christian and highly civilized 
people. Millions saw that this war upon the South was the 
successful instrument of enslaving the whole country, and that 
every man and dollar devoted to it was a contribution to our 
degradation, wdiich was already hopeless. All that was sacred 
in conviction, holy in religion, and solemn in divine obligation, 
was imperiled. To surrender these convictions debased the 
man, yet this was the demand made in the insulted name of the 
God of Truth. 

It was to commit these crimes, and destroy the safeguards 
which protected our liberty, that the debt was created to make 
our slavery perpetual. Upon whose conscience and by what law 
can any such debt bind a free and enlightened people? 



106 CHIMES OF THE CIVIL AVAR. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Violation of the Law of Nations. 

The Treaty with Mexico is the American doctrine of the 
conduct of war. 

Article 22nd. If (wliich is not to be expected and which God 
forbid) war should unhappily break out between the two repub- 
lics, they do now, with a view to such calamity, solemnly pledge 
themselves to each other and to the world to observe the follow- 
ing rules, absolutely where tlie nature of the subject permits, 
and as clor ely as possible in all cases where such absolute obser- 
vance shall be impossible. 

1. The merchants of either republic, then residing in the other, 
shall be allowed to remain twelve months, (for those dwelling 
in the interior, and six months for those dwelling at the sea- 
ports), to collect their debts and settle their aifairs; during 
which period they shall enjoy the same protection, and be on the 
same footing in all respects, as the citizens or subjects of the 
most friendly nations ; and, at the expiration thereof, or at any 
time before. They shall have full liberty to depart, carrying off 
all their effects without molestation or hindrance ; conforming 
therein to the same laws which the citi/xnis or subjects of the 
most friendly nations are required to conform to. 

Upon the entrance of the armies of either nation into the terri- 
tories of the other, women and children, ecclesiastics, scholars of 
every faculty, cultivators of the earth, merchants, artisans, man- 
uflicturers and fishermen, unarmed and inhabiting unfortified 
towns, villages or places, and in general all persons M'hose occu- 
pations are for the common subsistence and benefit of mankind, 
shall be allowed to continue their respective employments unmo- 
lested in their persons. . Nor shall their houses or goods be burnt, 
or otherwise destroyed, nor their cattle taken, nor their fields 
Avasted by the armed force into Avhose power, by the e\'ents of 
\var they may happen to fall; but if the necessity arise to take 
anything from them for the use of such armed force, the same 
shall be paid for at an equitable price. All churches, hosjiitals, 
schools, colleges, libraries and other establishments for charita- 



CHIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 107 

ble and beneficent purposes, shall be respected, and all persons 
connected Avith the same, protected in the discharge of their 
duties and the pursuit of their vocations. 

2. In order that the flite of prisoners of war may be allevia- 
ted, all such practices as those of sending them into distant, in- 
clement or unwholesome districts, or crowding tlieni into close 
and noxious places, shall be studiously avoided. They shall not 
be confined in dungeons, prison-ships or prisons; nor be put in 
irons, or bound or otlierwise restrained in the use of their limbs. 
The ofliccrs shall enjoy liberty on their paroles within conve- 
nient districts and have comfortable quarters. And the common 
soldiers shall be disposed in cantonments, open and extensive 
enough for air and exercise, and lodged in barracks as roomy 
and good as arc provided by the ]>arty in whose power they are, 
for its own troops. But if any oilicer shall break his parole by 
leaving the district so assigned him, or any otiier soldier shall 
escape from the limits of his cantonment, after tiiey shall have 
been designated to him, such individual, officer, or other prisoner, 
shall forfeit so much of the benefit of this article, as provides for 
his liberty on parole or in cantonment; and if any soldier so 
breaking'his parole, or any common soldier so escaping from the 
limits assigned him, shall afterward be found in arms previously 
to his being 4-egulariy exchanged, the person so oifending shall 
be dealt with according to the established laws of war. The 
officers shall be daily furnished by the party in whose power 
they are, with as many rations and of the same articles as are 
allowed either in kind or by commutation to officers of equal 
rank in its own army, and all others shall be daily furnished 
Avith such rations as are allowed to a common soldier in its own 
service, the value of all which supplies shall, at the close of the 
war, or at periods to be agreed upon by the respective comman- 
ders, be paid by the other party on the mutual adjustment of 
accounts for the subsistence of prisoners ; and such accounts shall 
not be mingled with or set off against any others, nor the balance 
due on them be withheld as a compensation or reprisal for any 
cause whatever, real or pretended. Each party shall bo allowed 
to keep a commissary of prisoners, appointed by itself Avith every 
cantonment of prisoners in possession of the other, Avhich com- 
missary shall see the prisoners as often as he pleases, shall be 
allowed to receive exempt from all duties or taxes and to dis- 
tribute Avhatever comforts may be sent to them by their friends ; 
and shall be free to transmit Lis reports in open letters to the 
party by Avhoni he is employed. And it is declared that neither 
the pretence that AA'ar dissolves all treaties, nor any other, Avhat- 



108 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

ever shall be considered as annulling or suspending the solemn 
covenant contained in this article ; on the contrary, the state of 
war is that precisely that for which it is provided, and during 
which its stipulations are to be sacredly observed as the most 
acknowledged obligations under the law of nature or of nations. 

This treaty is a compendium of the laws of nations, which 
must govern us until we abandon Christianity as a system and 
civilization as a law among men. 

This treaty was made after the greatest chieftain then living 
— had fully possessed the Capital of the State invaded. AVhen 
the arms of a fallen foe had yielded all hope of resistance, and 
the Mexicans, the weakest and most degraded of all our neighbor- 
ing Powers, were incapable of longer- endurance at our mercy. 

This treaty was made when the Evangelical Church, in 
the fervor of the living faith, breathed the pure spirit of char- 
ity. Love to God and love to man — long before bishops joined 
with infidels to possess and despoil other peoples, — Churches, 
claiming " the war power " to rob and possess, and appealing to 
the civil power to ratify the robbery, or thanking Congress for 
instituting military governments. 

The Senate which ratified this treaty, was the immediate des- 
cendants of the Revolutionary fathers. Elevated high above 
all mere passion when the great men of the Christian era were 
zealously seeking the reformation of bad governments and the 
destruction of arbitrary power; when the true spirit of political 
justice pervaded the institutions of the country, and real friends 
of progress looked to the extirpation of war as a remedy for 
any of the evils of government. 

No more terrible commentary can be made upon the conduct 
of the late civil war than this treaty with Mexico ; that the duty 
and the crime of the American people may be placed in exact 
justaposition. The following description of the vandalism of 
war, is from the pen of one of the most distinguished jurists of 
the country : 

" On the 20th of December, 1862, Gen. Grant was endeavoring 
to push his army of eighty thousand men through the interior 
of the State of Mississippi, along the line of the Central Rail 
Road, with the view of capturing Jackson and assailing Yicks- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 109 

burir from tlie East. His progress had been sIoav and tedious, 
owl no- to the fact that he was compelled to rebuild every rail- 
road bridge and trestle along the track, while the heavy rains of 
the season had rendered the ordinary roads almost impassable by 
army trains and artillery. His advance was within seven miles 
of Grenada, but the main body of his force was on the banks of 
the Yockany, eight miles south of Oxford, considerably depleted 
by tlie absence of the numerous detachments required to garri- 
son the towns and guard the railroad, from Columbus, Ky., 
which was his base of supplies, to Oxford, Mississippi, which 
was the most southerly point to which the road had been re- 
paired. Several weeks had been spent reconstructing the long 
bridge over the Tallahatchie, seventeen miles south of Holly 
Springs, and, in the meantime, the immense supplies of every 
description, required for so large an invading army, liad been 
transi^orted from Columbus to Holly Springs, where they were 
placed in depot, awaiting the completion of the bridge below. 
Federal officers estimated the cost of those supplies at seven 
millions of dollars. A Federal garrison of some two thousand 
men occupied the town, as a protection to the stores. Grant and 
his men were confident and boastful, expecting to occupy Vicks- 
burg before the middle of January. 

Just before daylight on the morning of the 20th of Decem- 
ber, the Confederate General Van Dorn, at the head of a small 
cavalry force, surprised and captured the garrison of Holly 
Springs, without the loss of a man on his part. The Federal 
loss was but one killed and two wounded. Scarcely a score of 
the garrison contrived to escape. Van Dorn proceeded at once 
to destroy Grant's supplies, by firing the buildings in which 
they were stored. He also burnt several thousand bales of cot- 
ton, most of which, the planters in the vicinity had been 
plundered, and which was then awaiting shipment to the North. 
A long train of cars, laden with army supplies, which was on the 
point for starting for Oxford, shared the same fate. By three 
o'clock, P. M., the work of destruction was completed, and Van 
Dorn, who was well aware that a largely superior force might 
be concentrated against him there within a few hours, paroled 
his prisoners upon the spot and withdrew towards Jackson, Tenn. 
By this single blow, alone, the entire plan of Grant's campaign 
was disastrously defeated. He was unable, for want of ammu- 
nition, to give battle to Pemberton at Grenada; the country 
around him, as far as his foraging parties could scour it with 
safety, was stripped of all supplies ; his communications with 
Columbus and with Memphis were cut off by Van Dorn's opera- 



110 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

tions upon the railroad above, and a hurried retreat upon Mem- 
phis was his only resouree against actual starvation. This retro- 
grade movement was commenced on the 20th of December, and 
on the afternoon of the next day, the Federal troops, crest-fallen 
and exasperated, re-entered Holly Springs. As they marched 
through the streets, the citizens, gazing upon them through the 
wintlows, were admonished, by brick-bats and other missiles 
hurled at them from the ranks, that they were to be held respon- 
sible for the brilliant exploit of Van Dorn. 

These ferocious soldiers, who, on their backward march from 
Oxford, through a thickly-settled region, had burned every house 
along the road, were at once turned loose to gratify their cu- 
pidity and wreak their malice upon the citizens. The work of 
indiscriminate pillage was instantly inaugurated. Every dwelling 
Avas soon swarming with men in uniform, some of whom wore 
the shoulder-straps of captains and colonels, who, with oaths and 
curses, brandishing their weapons, and threatening death to any 
who should oppose them, ransacked every nook and corner, every 
drawer, closet, cupboard, work-box, trimk or other receptacle in 
Avhich money, plate and otlicr valuables might be stored, and 
"confiscated" or " jay-liawked " — to use their own expressive 
synonym for robbery — whatever of value they were able to 
carry off with them. Nothing came amiss to these marauders. 
Provisions, money, silver plate, jewelry, watches, blankets and 
other covering, parlor ornaments, daguerreotypes, books, china, 
glass-ware, table cutlery, kitchen utensils, clothing, (and espe- 
cially rich and costly articles of ladies' apparel, with wliich these 
brigands afterwards decked the sable damsels who filled their 
camps,) all such articles, as well as the contents of the numerous 
stores in the town, w^ere speedily appro])riated. Furniture, in 
some instances, was uninjured by the soldiers, either during or 
after the process of plunder. In others, such articles as ward- 
robes and bureaus, which were locked, were broken open, the 
soldiers refusing, even Avhen the keys were presented to them, to 
use them, or suffer them to be used for unlocking them. In 
other cases still, all the furniture in the house was smashed, and 
everything of value, that had not been stolen, wantonly destroyed. 
While this work of pillage was jn-oceeding, many of the soldiers 
announced their jiurpose of burning the town, and declared that 
they had been ordered to do so. 

Within half an hour after the Federal troops had re-entered 
the town, a dense smoke rising from the residence of Mrs. John 
D. Martin, a wealthy widow lady, indicated that the torch of 
the incendiary had been brought into requisition. The soldiers 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. Ill 

fired her premises, inclnding the negro houses and all the other 
buildings on the grounds, and stood by, preventing her servants 
from removing anytliing of hers from the dwelling, or of their 
own from their habitations, until the flames had made such pro- 
gress that the buildings could no longer be ap])roaclied. It was 
avowed that this was a punisliment inflicted upon Mrs. Martin 
for her conduct on the previous day. The crime of which she 
had been guilty was this : She had a son, a captain of cavalry 
in the Confederate army. He came to Holly Springs, the day 
before, with Van Dorn ; and his mother, seeing him at a distance, 
requested the writer to call him to her. He came and dismounted 
b/ her side, and s|ie kissed him in the street. She detained him 
a's he was about to hasten away, to beg him to show any kindness in 
his power to a Federal officer, naming him, who had that morning 
been taken prisoner by Van Dorn, and who, said she, '' has afforded 
jn^otcction to your poor mother and your little brother and sister." 
Promising to remember the benefactor of his mother, he rode off 
to rejoin his company. The writer witnessed the entire interview 
between the mother and the son, and he has set forth, in all its 
enormity, the particulars of that offense which was visited upon 
her by the conflagration of her sumptuous home, with all its 
treasures of art and beauty, and its thousand holy mementoes of 
other years. 

Wm. F. Mason, Esq., upwards of sixty years of age, and an 
invalid, for his presumption in daring to implore some soldiers 
not to enter the room where his wife lay sick, was knocked down 
with the buts of their muskets, kicked, trampled on, and left for 
dead. His dwelling, filled with rich and costly furniture, was 
then completely " gutted." Three weeks afterwards, his life was 
still considered to be in danger from the frightful injnries he had 
sustained. Many other citizens were subjected to personal vio- 
lence, while none, whatever their age, sex or condition, escaj^ed 
the most brutal insults that could be heaped upon them. The 
ejiithets applied to ladies by the freebooters who thronged through 
their houses day after day, are unfit for publication. (" Damned 
bitch of a secesh whore" was one of the most decent of those 
whicli were unusually employed.) 

As darkness drew on, the soldiers fired other dwellings, in di- 
ferent parts of the town ; and, during the whole of that weary 
night, the vvretched inhabitants, fearing to lie down, lest they 
should be consumed in their houses, watched the flames that 
were devouring the houses of their neighbors, not knowing at 
what moment it might become necessary for them also to flee 
for their lives. For two long weeks afterwards^ while the Fed- 



112 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

erals continued to occupy the town, and the diiferent divisions, 
with their long trains, were slowly passing through, did this 
reign of terror continue. Not a night passed, during that period, 
that was not lit up by the flames of blazing houses ; and not a 
woman dared to disrobe herself for slumber, or even to seek re- 
pose at all during the night, unless she knew that the house was 
watched by those who would give her prompt notice of it should 
it be fired. More than a third of the town was reduced to ashes, 
and, had it been compactly built, scarcely a dwelling would have 
escaped. 

Personal insults were not those alone to which the people of 
Holly Springs were compelled to submit. The Presbyterian 
Church was used, Mdthout necessity, as a depository of ordnance 
stores. The Episcopal Church, of which the late Dr. J. H. 
Ingraham had been rector, was broken open, the seats destroyed, 
the carpets cut up, the prayer-books mutilated, the organ chopped 
open with axes and the pipes taken out of it by the soldiers to 
amuse themselves with, upon the streets, the altar disgustingly 
defiled, the walls defaced with obscene inscriptions, and the build- 
ing itself devoted to the vilest of human uses. Nor was this all. 
Even the beautiful cemetery of the town was not spared from the 
hand of ruthless violence. The soldiers entered its hallowed 
precincts with sledge-hammers and axes, broke down the orna- 
mental iron railings around the private lots, made a wreck of the 
costly monuments that marked the resting-place of the departed, 
uprooted the shrubbery, and left that spot, which, but the day 
before, had been so lovely, a scene of ruin and devastation. 

Gen. Grant, during the commission of these outrages, had his 
quarters in the finest house in the town — that of AVni. Henry 
Cox, Esq. He could not have been ignorant of what was going 
on ; and yet if he ever made an effort to prevent these atrocities 
or to punish the offenders, or if he ever expressed a regret that 
they had occurred, the citizens of Holly Springs never learned 
the fact. If a commander, who shrinks from the responsibility 
of openly ordering the perpetration ' of such barbarities by his 
troops, wishes to encourage his men in acts of vandalism, he has but 
to imitate the example of Gen. Grant at Holly Springs — shut 
his eyes and say nothing. 

VANDALISM IN OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI. 

During the summer and autumn of 18G2, Gen. Pemberton, at 
the liead of a considerable Confederate force, held a strongly- 
fortified position on the left bank of the Tallahatchie River, 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 113 

thirteen miles north of Oxford, Mississippi, on the line of the 
^Mississippi Central Railroad. Late in the month of November 
of that year, while Gen. Grant, with a vastly snperior army, 
was pressing him in front, from the north, Gen. Pemberton, 
learning that his commnnications with Jackson and Vicksburg 
were threatened by an expedition which had set ont from Helena 
with the object of captnring Grenada, decided to fall back him- 
self upon Grenada. He withdrew from the river without loss 
of men or stores, and occupied his new position at his leisure, his 
rear-guard only haviug, in the meantime, a few unimportant 
skirmishes with Grant's advance. One of these skirmishes oc- 
curred a short distance north of Oxford, and was prolonged 
only until a train of cars laden with army stores, could be safely 
got away from the railroad station. The Confederates then re- 
tired unmolested, completely evacuating the town, and some time 
elapsed before the Federals entered it. The citizens were aware 
that Grant's forces were at hand, and that they might be expected 
at any moment to make their appearance ; but being themselves 
unarmed and defenceless, they apprehended no personal danger, 
and many of them, led by curiosity, remained upon the street. 
They were destined shortly to be undeceived. The Federal 
advance, consisting of Kansas and Wisconsin cavalry, armed 
with repeating rifles, rushed into the town like a whirlwind, 
firing indiscriminately upon every one found in the streets. A 
boy of fourteen, the son of a widowed mother, was shot down 
while he was chopping wood in the yard. A negro man, belonging 
to Pr. E. E. Chilton, went to a gate with a couple of his master's 
children, to look at the soldiers as they passed. A volley was 
directed at the group, and the poor negro fell, shot through both 
thighs. An elderly citizen, quietly walking along the street, 
was fired on by a squad of cavalry. Drawing a white handker- 
chief from his pocket, he waved it at them in token of surrender. 
The murderous wretches replied by another volley. He then 
endeavored to gain the shelter of a neighboring building, and, 
as he ran, the soldiers galloped forward and sent a third volley 
after him, but he escaped unhurt. Doubtless, had the workman- 
ship of the " Union " soldiers been commensurate with their 
malignity, at least two score of inoffensive citizens would then 
have been butchered in cold blood, for more than fifty of them 
were fired on. It is almost needless to observe that this conduct 
of the troops was not provoked by any attempted resistance on 
the part of the citizens. 

The cavalry rapidly scoured the different streets of the town, 
and then, finding that they had no armed enemies to fear, they 



114 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

commenced the work of pillage and destruction. It was late in 
the afternoon when they entered the town. Before the morning 
dawned again, the place had been so thoroughly sacked that 
little remained to tempt the cupidity of the spoiler. Those 
"jay hawkers" well understood the art of " making night hideous " 
to the inhabitants, whose dwellings were overrun by ferocious 
and brutal ruffians, many of them intoxicated, who searched 
everywhere for valuables, appropriated all that they coveted, 
including, in many cases, the personal ornaments and even the 
dresses of ladies ; demanding tlie surrender of watches and money 
at the mouth of the pistol, and wantonly destroying what they 
were unable to remove. Looking-glasses were smashed * pianos 
broken up, carpets cut to pieces, china demolished, paintings 
mutilated by thrusting bayonets through them, windows destroyed, 
feather beds ripped up and their contents given to the winds, 
and, in many cases, the large stocks of pi'ovisions which the 
families of that region were accustomed to keep in their smoke- 
houses, were rendered unfit for food by knocking in the heads of 
barrels containing sugar, molasses, flour, vinegar, etc., and 
mingling all together with salt and ordure from the stable. Many 
a family who on the morning of the 2nd of December were 
surrounded with every comfort and supplied with stores sufficient 
for a twelvemonth, Avere twenty-four hours thereafter, without a 
morsel of food upon their premises, or even the means of preparing 
the most simple meal, for they had been deprived of everything 
that could serve as a cooking utensil. From time to time, during 
the 3rd and 4th of December, fresh bodies of Federal trgops 
arrived in the town, and these, in turn, swarmed through every 
habitation, eagerly seeking to glean something from the wreck 
that had been left by their comrades, and exasperated against the 
citizens because they had so little remaining to be plundered. 
In one instance a negro woman was encouraged to make a per- 
sonal assault upon her mistress, and armed soldiers stood by, 
declaring that they would shoot the latter if she resisted. Eefined 
and delicate ladies were compelled to listen to every species of 
j^rofane and obscene language ; to submit to the grossest and 
most cruel insults, and, too often, even to the only outrages that 
can be perpetrated against womanhood. 

Every horse, mule, ox, cow, hog, sheep and fowl belonging to 
the inhabitants of the town and of the surrounding country, as 
far as Grant's foraging parties could penetrate, was remorselessly 
confiscated ; all the corn, forage and provisions that could be 
found were seized, and nothing paid for. Cotton was worth sixty 
cents a pound. Grant issued an order forbidding sales at a 



CRIMES OF TH^. CIVIL WAR. 115 

hlglior price tlian twenty-five cents. If owneis refnsecl to sell 
at tliat price, it was taken from them without payment. One 
man, j\Ir. Fernandez, preferred to burn his cotton. In revenge, 
the Federals burned every building on his plantation, with all 
that they contained. 

Gen. Grant was in Oxford when a portion of the outrages 
above enumerated were committed by his troops, and he made 
no efforts either to prevent them or to punish the perpetrators. 

One of the highest offences known to military law is the vio- 
lation, by a soldier, of a safe conduct granted by his commander. 
Gen. Grant however, while at Oxford, suffered his pass to be 
violated with impunity. The Hon. James M. Howry, of Oxford, 
obtained a pass from Gen. Grant, requiring all United States 
troops to permit him to proceed unmolested, with a w^agon and 
certain trunks, to his plantation, some forty miles below. Judge 
Howry was met, about five miles from town, by a company of 
Federal cavalry belonging to Quinby's Division, who compelled 
him to halt. He produced Gen. Grant's pass, countersigned by 
Gen. Quinby, but the soldiers, cursing him and Grant and 
Quinby, refused to respect the pass. They stripped the Judge 
to the skin, robbed him of all the money found upon his person, 
broke open and rifled his trunks, stole his mules and saddle- 
horses, and left him in the wood. He made his way back to 
Oxford and reported the facts to Gen. Grant, who listened im- 
patiently to his statement and refused to afford him thie slightest 
redress. 

Judge Howry was the Secretary of the Board of Trustees of 
the University of Mississippi, a literary institution of high rep- 
utation, located at Oxford. The voluminous archives of the 
University were deposited in Judge Howry's office, and the 
Federal officers were aware of this fact. Such documents else- 
where have ever been regarded, by the custom of all civilized 
countries, as sacred from the hand of violence in war. But, in 
Oxford, the Federal soldiers were permitted by their officers in 
open day, to break open Judge Howry's office and to scatter the 
documents found therein, which can never be replaced, in the 
deep mud of the streets. 

The collection of the State Geological Survey, which had been 
gathered and arranged with vast labor during many years, were 
contained in the University buildings at Oxford. The Federal 
soldiery were permitted to despoil that collection of everything 
they considered curious, leaving wdiat remained an almost undis- 
tinguishable mass of rubbish." 

A most reliable and responsible colonel of the Federal army 



116 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

told the winter that after the new levies were taken to the West- 
ern armies, that he travelled from Corinth down through the 
State of Mississippi by the lurid light of burning houses, plan- 
tations and cotton fields ; until the whole heavens were covered 
with a sheet of flame, night after night, until they reached 
Holly Spring by the illumination of these infernal bonfires. Every 
attempt to arrest this work upon the part of the old regulars was 
at the peril of their lives, which were endangered by the inflam- 
matory harangues of the chaplains and demagogues. These are 
given as illustrations of the character of the war. 

THE BRUTAL HUNTER UNPARALLELED FIENDISHNESS. 

[From the Richnioud Enquirer, Septeml)er 13.] 

The following letter, not written for puV)lication, is from the 
daughter of a gentleman in Clark county, Va,, whose house was 
lately burned by the enemy. He had previously been despoiled 
of all his, sheep, cattle, horses and hogs, by the invaders. It 
tells of coarse brutality and fiendishness unequaled in civilized 
warfare : 

Clark County, Ya., Aug. 24, 1864. 

My Dear Sisters : — Since that terrible day that we were 
deprived of house and home, I have neither had time nor nerve 
to write to you ; but now that an opportunity offers to let you 
hear of our personal safety, I must try to tell you of all that has 
befallen us. I feel almost frantic to think of it, and night and 
day tlie horrors of the scene are present with me. To-day, two 
weeks ago, my aunt, Mrs. S., was taken sick, and day after day she 
grew worse until Thursday night, at half-past 12 o'clock, she 
breathed her last. Poor mother was with her and wrote imme- 
diately to father and myself to come, and just as I lighted the 
lamp to read the note, the report of firearms reached our ears. I 
immediately extinguished the light, as we were surrounded by 
the enemy, and from what we had heard in the evening, we con- 
jectured the shots proceeded from the picket-post which Mosby 
had attacked. 

Of course, father and I could not go to mother until morning, 
he tlien went and mother returned with him. Just at the mo- 
ment of return, sixty Yankees rode up to the house. One of 
the officers seized the horse mother rode and demanded to know 
where she had been ; mother was completely overcome and could 
not answer. I replied, "she is just from the death-bed of her 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 117 

sister, and if you have any heart or manly feeling, tell rae quiet- 
ly your business, and I will attend to it." He turned to father 
with an expression of fiendish delight on his countenance, and 
said : " I hav^e orders to burn every house on your farm." 
Father demanded the charges against him, and he (Captain) re- 
plied : "Because Mosby murdered one of our pickets last night, 
and there was a light seen in this house, and we know jNIosby 
came from this house." We })rotested he had not, and told 
him the reason Ave had a light for a minute. 

Father then begged to be taken to Gen. Custer as a hostage, 
and asked him to spare his house on account of his sick wile, 
sick son-in-law, and two helpless little infants. The Captain 
replied, " Men, to your work ; take what you want and fire as 
you go." " Guard that man down here, and carry him up to 
headquarters." "That man " was my sick husband, and in my 
agony I fell on my knees to that brute to spare my sick hnsband 
and take me. With a mocking laugh at my request lie sent his 
surgeon to examine him, and thank God, the surgeon had a 
heart, and instead of saying anything to Dr. B., he said to me, 
" Come, go with me, and I will help you to save some clothes." 

The house was then on fire, and the men plundering and firing 
as they went. INIy poor old fiither and myself went back to 
the captain and besought him, for God's sake, to come and stop 
the men until we could get even a change of clothes. He re- 
plied, " My presence is not needed ;" and at last when we began 
to throw some things out of the windows, and he thought he 
might pick up some valuables, he came up to the house. Near- 
ly everytliing we threw out was stolen — clotlies, jewelry, silver, 
and something of everything they carried off. Some of them 
had bundles as large as a cliild before and behind them. One 
of them swore I should not take from the burning house my 
dear little boy Charlie, who was asleep, because they said he 
would grow up to be a rebel. 

I pusiied by the man and told liim, as soon as he was large 
enough I Avould put a gun in his hands and tell him of all we 
had suffered, and if he did not figlit with an unequalled bravery, 
he would not be my son. One of the brutes held my mother in 
the store-room, Avhile some others rifled it and set it on fire. One 
took me by the shoulders and thre-vv me from the to}) to the bot- 
tom of tlie steps. The last time I was in the house I seized my 
box of jewelry ; a man, or rather a devil, jerked it from me, an'd 
scattered the contents on the floor. I caught up one of my dia- 
mond rings, the bracelet sister C. gave me, and the children's 
bracelets and several otlier things, when the wretch seized me 
and held me, and got them from me. 



118 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

In less than fifteen minntcs the flames had enveloped the 
whole house. The labors of mother and father for thirty -three 
years were destroyed in fifteen minutes. They rifled father's 
secretary, where all his public and private papers were, and then 
set the pieces of furniture on fire. 

The officers went off loaded with the richest part of the ])lun- 
der. Not a carpet was saved, not a comfort, not a bureau, not a 
washstand, but one pitcher and basin. They stole two dozen 
handsome silver spoons, nearly all the jewelry belonging to 
mother and myself, twenty-six pairs of linen sheets, and three 
hundred pounds of sugar were burned and stolen. 

Oh! the worst is yet to be told. AVhen the flames burst from 
every part of our dear, old comfortable home, my darling 
mother's reason gave way. For twenty-four hours she was a 
raving maniac. She fainted away time after time, and after she 
became sensible, it would have touched a heart of stone to have 
witnessed her sorrow. She grieved for the home where her 
childi'en had been born and bred and died, where she had seen 
sorrow and pleasure. Every corner and spot in it and every- 
thing in it was associated with some dear remembrance. INIy 
poor father bore it like a hero, and with tears streaming down 
his face, said : "Oh! my child, you have let the Yankees shake 
your confidence in God." In my agony I had called out: "Oh ! 
God, why hast thou forsaken us?" 

Oh! no words can describe the horrors of that day. The 
next day (Saturday) Ave had to place the remains of my dear 
aunt in the grave without a word. The vandals would not per- 
mit a minister to come out of Berryville or from the ncighbor- 
liood ; we had to send to Loudon for a coffin and to put the 
grave in the garden. We had a sup])ly of flour Avhich could 
have been saved, but the wretches knocked the heads of the bar- 
rels out to prevent our moving it. The trunks containing the 
winter clothes were rifled. I lost nearly all my clothes. 

"What they did not carry off they set on fire. A handsome 
silk dress which mother had given me and had been made but a 
few weeks, one of them took, and said, " he knew that he was 
going to take that to his old woman." I Avas reaching to the top 
of a press, getting down some house linen, Avhen a demon took a 
large scrap bag, and two cambric Avrappers and set them on fire 
just under me. I saAV my danger and sprang over to save my 
life, though noAv I feel the efl'ects of the heated flames. Tell 
brother T. I fought for his picture, and Avhen I found I could 
could not save it, I broke it to pieces. 

Some days afterAvard mother and I Avcntto Gen. Custer's head- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 119 

quarters to try to recover some of father's papers and some of the 
silver. Of course we got none. But we told liim of the con- 
duct of his men and officers, and told him we would publish it 
to the world. They burned three houses; ours was the first. 
A short time after they left our house, Mosby passed by and 
overtoolv them, and killed, it is said, thirty of them. Even my 
purse was stolen with every cent of •money we had. - 



120 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Torture, Cruelty and Outrage. 
THE MOXSTER M'"]S'EIL. 

In the town of Palmyra, Missouri, John McNeil had his 
headquarters as colonel of a Missouri regiment and commander 
of the post. 

An officious person who had acted as a spy and common in- 
former, named Andrew Allsman, who was engaged in the de- 
testable business of having his neighbors arrested upon charges 
of disloyalty, and securing the scoutings and ravages from 
every house that was not summarily burned to the earth. This 
had so long been his vocation that he was universally loathed 
by people of every shade of opinion, and soon brought upon 
himself the fate common to all such persons in every county, 
where the spirit of self-defence is an element of human nature. 
In his search for victims for the prison which was kept at Pal- 
myra, this man was missed ; nobody knew wdien, or where, or 
how ; whether drowned in the river absconding from the army, 
or killed by Federal soldiers or concealed Confederates. 

His failure to return was made the pretext for a scries of the 
most horrible crimes ever recorded in any country, civilized or 
barbarous. 

Jolui INIcNeil is a Nova Scotian by birth, the descendant of 
the expelled torics of the American Hevolution, who took sides 
against the colonists in the rebellion against Great Britain. He 
is by trade a hatter, who made some money in the Mexican war. 
He had lived in Saint Louis for many years, simply distin- 
guished for his activity in grog-shop politics. He was soon in 
the market on the outbreak of the war, and received a colonol's 
commission. Without courage, military knowledge or expe- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 121 

riencc, he entered tlic army for the purpose of murder and rob- 
bery. 

As the tool of LIcNeil, W. H. Strachau acted in the capacity 
of provost marshal general, whose enormities exceed anything 
in the wicked annals of human depravity. 

At the instigation of McNeil, the provost marshal went to 
the prison, filled with quiet, inoffensive farmers, and selected ten 
men of age and respectability ; among the rest an old Judge of 
Knox county, all of whom had helpless families at home, in des- 
titution and unprotected. 

These names, which should be remembered as among the vic- 
tims of the reign of the Monster of the Christian era, were as 
follows : 

William Baker, Thomas Huston, Morgan Bixler, John Y. l\Ic- 
Pheeters of Lewis, Herbert Hudson, John M. Wade, Marion 
Lavi of Ealls, Capt. Thomas A. Snyder of Monroe, Eleazer 
Lake of Scotland, and Hiram Smith of Knox county, were sen- 
tenced to be shot without trial or any of the forms of military 
law, by a military commander whose grade could not have given 
ratification to a court-martial, had one been held; had the parties 
been charged with crime, which they were not. 

Mr. Humphreys, also in prison, was to have been shot instead of 
one of those named above, but which one the author has not the 
means of knowing. The change in the persons transpired in 
this way : 

Early on the morning of the execution, Mrs. Mary Humphreys 
came to see her husband before his death, to intercede for his re- 
lease. She first went to see McNeil, who frowned, stormed, and 
let loose a volley of such horrible oaths at her for daring to 
plead for her husband's life that she fled away through fear, and 
when she closed the door, the unnameable fiend cursed her with 
blasphemous assurances that her husband should be dispatched 
to hell at one o'clock. The poor affrighted woman, with bleed- 
ing heart, hastened to the provost marshal's office, and quite 
fainted away as she besought him to intercede with McNeil for 
the preservation of her husband's life. With a savage, taunting 
grin, Strachau said " that may be done, madam, by getting me 
three hundred dollars." This she did through the kindness of 
two gentlemen, who advanced the money at once. 



122 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL AVAR. 

She returned Avith the money and paid it to Strachan. ]\Irs. 
Humphrey had her little daughter by her side, when she sank 
into her seat with exhaustion. Scarcely had she taken her place, 
until Strachan told her that she had still to do something else to 
secure her husband's release. At this moment he thrust the lit- 
tle girl out of the door and threatened the fainting v/oman with 
the execution of her husband. She fell as a lifeless corpse to 
the floor. After he had filled his jjockcts with money and satia- 
ted liis lust, the provost marshal released poor Humphreys. 
Another innocent victim Avas taken in his place to cover up the 
hideous crime. The newspapers Avere commanded to publish 
the falsehood that some one had A'olunteered to die in his stead. 
The additional murdered man Avas a sacrifice to the A'cnality, 
murder and rape of the provost 'marshal. The A^ctim Avas an 
unobtrusive young man, caught up and dragged off as a Avild 
beast to the slaughter, Avithout any further notice than Avas neces- 
sary to prepare to Avalk from the jail to the scene of murder. 

The other eleven Avere notified of their contemplated murder 
some eighteen hours before the appointed moment of the tragedy. 
llcv. James S. Green, of the city of Palmyra, remained Avitli 
them through the night. 

Between elcA'cn and twelve o'clock the next day, three gov- 
ernment Avagons drove to the jail Avitli ten rough boxes, upon 
AA'hich the ten martyrs to brutal demonism, Avere seated. 

This appalling spectacle Avas made more frightful by the rough 
jeering of the mercenaries Avho guarded tlie \dctims to the place 
of butchery. The jolting Avagons Avere driven through street 
after street, Avhich Avas abandoned by every human being ; avo- 
men fainting at the awful spectacle, clasping their children more 
closely to their bosoms, as the murderers, Avith blood pictured in 
their countenances, Avere screaming in hoarse tones the Avord of 
command. 

The company of stranger adventurers, mercenaries, and the 
vilest resident population, formed a circle at the scene, in imita- 
tion of the Roman slaughter in the time of Nero, Caligula and 
Commodus, to feast their sensual eyes on blood and amuse them- 
seh'es Avith the piteous shrieks of the dying men. This infer- 
nal saturnalia commenced Avith music. Everything Avas done 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 123 

wli Icli mioht liarrow the fcolinG;.s and torture the soul. The I'ough 
coffins were pkiced before them in such manner as to excite horror; 
tlie grave opened its yawning mouth to terrify tliem ; but they 
stood unmoved amid the frenzied, murderous mob. Capt. Snyder 
was dressed in beautiful black, with white vest; magnificent head 
covered with rich wavy locks that fell around his broad should- 
ers like the mane of a lion. When the mercenaries were pre- 
paring to consummate this horrible crime, they at last seemed 
conscious of the character and the magnitude of this awful M'ork, 
grew pale and trembled: even the brutal Strachan seemed alarm- 
ed at his own nameless and compounded crimes of lust, avarice 
and murder. Kcv. Mr. llhodes, a meek and unobtrusive min- 
ister of the Baptist Church, prayed Avith the dying men, and 
Strachan reached out his bloody hands to bid them adieu. They 
generously forgave their murderers. 

To lengthen out 'the cruel tragedy, the guns were fired at dif- 
ferent times that death might be dealt out in broken periods. 
Two of the men were killed outright. Capt. Snyder sprang to 
his feet, faced the soldiers, jiierced their cowardly faces with his 
unbandaged eagle eye fell forward to rise no more. 

The other seven were wounded, mangled and butchered in 
detail, with pistols ; whilst the ear Avas rent with their piteous 
groans, praying to find refuge in death. The whole butchery 
occupied some fifteen minutes. 

The country was appalled at the recital of these crimes, and 
incredulous of the facts. 

The newspapers were suppressed to prevent their publication, 
and the exposure of the perpetrators. The punishment of the 
criminals was demanded by public justice and expected by 
everybody except the criminals, who well understood the cruelty 
and corruption of the Executive Department. 

To cover up these crimes by a judicial fiirce, nearly two years 
afterwards, charges Avere preferred against Strachan ; he was con- 
victed upon the foregoing state of facts, and sentence passed upon 
him. The sentence was remitted and Strachan ])romoted. 

For this crime McNeil was promoted by Lincoln to brigadier 
general and kept in office. In all of the history of European 
wars, Asiatic butcheries, Indian cruelties and negro atrocities, 



124 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

there can be found no parallel instance in which the murder of 
men without any of the forms of trial, was accompanied with 
the rape of the wives of those designated by the lottery of death 
as the price of the husband's liberty. There was nothing left 
undone to make the whole scene cruel, loathesome and revolting. 

This outrage unpunished, gave license for crime, cruelty, out- 
rage and disorder everywhere. It would require the pen of 
every writer, the paper of every manufacturer, for a year, to 
recount them ; the human imagination sickens in contem})lation 
of them. 

In the next year after the McNeil butchery, in the neighboring 
city of Hannibal, occurred a similar crime, equally monstrous 
in its details. 

J. T. K. HeyAvard commanded a body of enrolled brigands in 
Marion County, known as the railroad brigade, who ibraged 
upon the peo])le and plundered tlie country. 

Hugh B. Bloom, a drunken soldier of the Federal army, re- 
turning to his regiment, muttered some offensive words in the 
presence of Heyward's men. Bloom was immediately dragged 
from the steamboat upon which he was traveling and carried be- 
fore Heyward. 

Heyward improvised a military court, tried the drunken man, 
and condemned him to immediate death. 

Whilst the poor wretch was unconscious of his condition, dis- 
qualified for self-defence, and unable to understand the fearful 
nature of his i)cril, he was hurried off to the most public place, 
on the river side ; the people of the town, trembling with fear, 
were compelled to witness the horrid scene. 

The worst was yet to come. Old and respectable citizens, be- 
cause knoAvn for their quiet demeanor and hatred of violence, 
were dragged down to witness the horrid spectacle. Twelve of 
these gentlemen were presented Avith muskets, and commanded 
to fire at the trembling inebriate sitting upon his coffin. 

To enforce this fiendish order to make })rivate gentlemen com- 
mit public murder, Hey ward's brigands were placed immediately 
behind the squad of private citizens and commanded to fire upon 
the first who hesitated to fire at Bloom. i\s the shuddering man 
sank down beneath the terrible volley of musketry, Heyward 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 125 

turned upon the people cand warned thcni of their impending llite 
in the murder of this man. 

The spectacle was revolting in itself. It was terrible in view 
of the fact, that these militia were unauthorized by law for any 
.such purpose ; that the execution was without the shadow of law, 
that tiie victim was a Union soldier, who had committed no of- 
fence ; that the men who were forced to do this horrid work were 
unwilling to commit the crime, and protested against being made 
the instruments of such bloody horror. But how ineffably 
shocking that the perpetrator, Heyward, should be a member of 
a Christian church, and assume the office of Sabbath School 
teacher; that little children should look upon the horrible visage 
of the murderous wretch as their instructor. 

This Heyward, secluded from the enquiring world, overawing 
and corrupting the press of his own neighborhood, was the most 
Satanic of all the local tyrants of Missouri. 

At one time he gathered all of the old and respectable citizens 
of Hannibal, including such highly cultivated gentlemen of 
spotless escutcheon, as Hon. A. W. Lamb, into a dilapidated, 
falling house, and placed powder under it to blow it to atoms, in 
case Hannibal should be visited by rebels. 

In Monroe county, two farmers were arrested by the provost 
marshal's guard, taken a short distance from home, shot down 
and thrown into the field with the swine. 

On the next day the recognized fragments of the bodies were 
gathered up by the neighbors and carried to their respective 
bouses, and prepared for interment. 

The citizens were 'so respectable, the murder so brutal, the 
outrage so revolting, that people gathered from a large distance 
around, to bury in decency the remains of those who had been 
so shockingly destroyed. 

AVhen the funeral procession had been formed, the provost mar- 
shal sent his guard to disperse them ; declaring that no person 
opposed to the war, should have public burial. 

The heart-broken families had to go unattended to the grave 
of their respective head ; each one dreading the danger that beset 
the highway upon their return home ; and feeling even more in 
danger from marauders in the secret chambers of their own 
domicil. 



12G CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

During tliis drunken reign of horrors, innocent people were 
shot down upon their door sills, called into their gardens upon 
pretended business, butchered and left lying, that their families 
might not know their whereabouts until their bodies were de- 
composed. Women were ravished, houses burned, plantations 
laid waste'. 

Judo-e Ricliardson was shot whilst in the court house in Avhich 
he presided, in Scotland county. Rev. Wm. Headlec, a minister 
of the gospel, was shot upon the highway ; and all of these mur- 
derers, robbers and incendiaries, are yet at large. 

Dr. Glasscock, a physician, was dragged from his own house 
by soldiers, under pretence of taking him to court as a witness, 
against the earnest prayers of his cliildron and slaves, was shot, 
mangled, disfigured and mutilated, then brought to his own 
yard and thrown down like a dead animal. 

To prevent punishment by law, these criminals repealed the 
laws against their crimes ; and provided in the constitution that 
crime should go unpunished if committed by themselves. 

To make themselves secure in their crime and to give immu- 
nity from punishment, they disfranchised the masses of the peo- 
ple ; and in the city of St, Louis the criminal vote elected the 
criminal McNeil as the sheriff of the county of St. Louis — the 
tool of the weakest and most malignant tyrants. 

milroy's order. 
St. George, Tucker Co., Ya., Nov. 28fh, 1862. 

Mr. Adaim Harper, 

Sir — In consequence of certain robberies Avhich have been 
committed on Union citizens of this county by bands of gueril- 
las, you are hereby assessed to the amount ($(285.00) two hundred 
and eighty-five dollars, to make good their losses ; and upon 
your failure to comply with the above assessment by the 8th day 
of December, the following order has been issued to me by Brig. 
Gen. R. H. Milroy: 

You are to burn their houses, seize all their property and shoot 
them. You will be sure that you strictly carry out this order. 

You will inform the inhabitants for ten or fifteen miles around 
your camp, on all the roads approaching the toAvn upon which 
the enemy may approach, that they must dash in and give you 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 127 

notice, and upon any one failing to do so, you will burn their 
houses and shoot the men. 

By order Brig. Gen. R. H. Milroy, 

H. Kellog, Capt Commanding Post. 

Mr. Harper was an old gentlemen, over 82 years of age, a 
cripple, and can neither read nor write the English language, 
though a good German scholar. This gentlemen was one of 
twelve children, had served in the war of 1812, was the son of 
a Revolutionary soldier who bore his musket during the whole 
war, inherited a woodland tract, and built up a substantial home 
in the midst of Western Virginia. 

His was only one of a class which swept over West Virginia, 
and left the beautiful valleys of Tygart and the Potomac rivers 
in ashes and desolation. 

It is to pay for crimes like these, and keep in employment the 
men who committed them that created the debt now weighing 
the people down. It was to pay such monsters, with their tools, 
that money was refunded by the general government to the State 
of Missouri and West Virginia, and the taxes saddled upon the 
people of the country. 

The following letter gives its own explanation : 

Macon, Ga., October 7, 1867. 
Henry Clay Dean, Mount Pleasant, loioa : 

Dear Sir — I have read your late communication addressed 
to " The Prisoners of War, and victims of arbitrary arrests in 
the United States of America. " 

You allege that " the Congress of the United States refused to 
extend the investigation contemplated by a resolution, adopted 
by that body on the 10th of July, 1867, appointing certain par- 
ties to investigate the treatment of prisoners of war, and Union 
citizens held by the Confederate authorities during the rebellion, 
to the prisoners of war, victims of 'arbitrary power and military 
usurpation by the authority of the Federal administration. ' " 

Appreciating your object "to put the truth upon the record," 
and concurring in your patriotic suggestion that " it is the duty 
of every American to look to the honor of his country and the 
preservation of the truth of history, " I have felt constrained to 



128 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

respond to the call made in your circular, so far as to acquaint 
the public, through you, with the following precise, simple, and 
unexao;a:erated statement of facts : 

When the Capitol of the Confederate States was evacuated, 
the specie belonging to the Richmond banks was removed, with 
the archives of the government, to Washington, Ga. Early 
after the close of the war, a wagon train conveying this specie 
from Washington to Abbeville, S. C, was attacked and robbed 
of an amount approximating to $100,000, by a body of disband- 
ed cavalry of the Confederate army. 

A few weeks subsequent to this event. Brigadier General Ed- 
ward A. Wild, with an escort consisting of twelve negro soldiers, 
under the command of Lieutenant Seaton, of Captain Alfred 
Cooley's company, (156th Regiment of N. Y. Volunteers) repaired 
to the scene of the robbery in the vicinity of Danburg, Wilkes 
county, Georgia. By the order of Gen. Wild, and in his pres- 
ence, A. D. Chenault, a Methodist minister, weighing 275 
pounds, his brother, John N. Chenault, of moderate size, and a 
son of the latter, only 15 years of age, but weighing 230 pounds, 
were arrested and taken to an adjacent wood, where the money 
abstracted from the train, or a portion of it, was supposed to be 
concealed. Failing to j^roduce the money upon the order of 
General Wild, these three citizens, who enjoy the esteem and 
confidence of all who knew them, were suspended by their thumbs, 
with the view of extorting confessions as to the place of its con- 
cealment. Mr. John N. Chenault was twice subjected to this 
torture, and on one occasion until he fainted, and was then cut 
down. Rev. A. D. Chenault was also hung up twice by his 
thumbs, and until Gen. Wild was induced only by his groans 
and cries to release him from his agony. The youth, A. F. Che- 
nault, was hung up once, and until he exhibited evident signs of 
fainting, when he was cut down. AVliilst this scene was being 
enacted, Gen. Wild and his subaltern were both present, direct- 
ing the whole operations. These citizens, with the exception of 
John N. Chenault, who was unable to be removed, were then 
sent under guard to Washington, fifteen miles distant. 

By order of Gen. Wild, a daughter of John IST. Chenault, 
about the age of seventeen years, universally beloved in her 
neighborhood, and distinguished for her piety, was searched, by 
being stripped, in the presence of the Lieutenant, who was 
charged with the execution of the order. When her gar- 
ments, piece by piece, were taken from her and the very last one 
upon her was reached, in tlie instincts of her native modesty, she 
threw herself upon a bed and sought to conceal her person with 



CrJMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 129 

its covering, she -was ordered to stand out upon tlie floor until 
stripped to perfect nakedness. 

By order of Gen. Wild, the wife of Jolin N. Clicnault was 
arrested and taken under guard to Wasliington, where she was 
incai'cerated for several days, fed on bread and water, in one of 
the petit jnry rooms of the court house, and after she had been 
forced to leave at her home her nursing infant, but nine months 
old, where it continued to remain until its mother was released. 

During the ])eriod of her imprisonment. Gen. Wikl was waited 
upon at his hotel by three citizens of the county, to wit: Francis 
G. Wingfield, Richard T. Walton, and your correspondent, v/Jio 
importuned this officer to permit one of the party to take Hilrs. 
Chenault to his residence in the village, each pledging his neck, 
and all tendering bond, Avith security, in any amount which he 
would be pleased to nominate, for her appearance at any time 
and place in obedience to his order. This request Gen. Wild 
promptly and emphatically refused, but graciously allowed her 
friends to supply her with suitable food at the place of her con- 
finement. 

The tortures and indignities thus inflicted upon this family, 
who are respected and esteemed by all who knew them, failed to 
discover any evidence v/hatever of their complicity in the rob- 
bery, or any knowledge of tlie concealment of any of its fruits. 

The facts thus detailed were reported in substance to Major 
General James S. Steadman, then on duty at Augusta, Ga., who 
immediately ordered his Inspector General (whose name is not 
remembered) to Washington, with instructions to collect the evi- 
dence as to the truth of the re])resentations made to him. After 
spending several days at Washington and its vicinity, in the ex- 
amination of witnesses, this officer observed that the facts M'hich 
he had elicited fully corroborated the statements which had been 
forwarded to Gen. Steadman. 

Gen. Wild wos renioved by the order of Gen. Steadman, and 
ordered to Washington City, Charges were also preferred against 
him, but the public is not advised that even as much as a reprimand 
was ever administered to him. 

The foregoing statement of facts will be avouched by many 
citizens of Washington, and of Wilkes and Lincoln counties. 
You are respectfully referred to James M. Dyson, Gabriel 
Toombs, Green P. Cozart, Hon. Garnett Andrews, Dr. J. J. 
Robertson, Dr. James H. Lane, Dr. J. B. Ficklin, Richard T. 
Walton, Dr. John Haynes Walton, and David G. Cotting, the 
present editor of the Republican, at Augusta. 

Prompted by no spirit of personal malevolence, but in obedience 
9 



130 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

alone to the instinct of a virtuous patriotism, I Jiave thus "a' 
round unvarnished tale delivered " of some of the actings and 
doings of this officer, studiously refraining from any denunciation, 
and suppressing every suggestion the least calculated to excite 
the prejudices or inflame tiie passions of the public. 

I am, very respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

Joiix B. Weems. 

An attempt to record the crimes committed during the civil 
war would fill volumes and excite horror. 

We can only indicate the crimes rather than give detail of 
their circumstances. 

One gentleman from Vicksburg, writes in justly indignant 
language of the rape and robbery of his wife ; that he has sought 
redress in vain of the military authorities. Another of the vio- 
lation of two ladies by beastly mercenaries, until one dies, and 
the other lives a raving maniac. 

A lady writes from Liberty, Missouri, that her iather, Mr.' 
Payne, a minister of Christ, was murdered by the military and 
left out from his dwelling for several days, until found by some 
neighbors in a mutilated condition. 

A gentleman Avrites that a wretch named Harding boasts that 
he had beaten out the brains of a wounded Confederate prisoner 
at the battle of Drainesville. 

The affidavit of Thomas E. Gilkerson states that negro soldiers 
were promoted to corporals for shooting white prisoners at Point 
Lookout, where he was a prisoner. 

That he was transferred to Elmira, New York, where pris- 
oners were starved into skeletons ; were reduced to the necessity 
of robbing the night-stool of the meats Avhich, being spoiled, 
could not be eaten by the sick, was thrown into the bucket of 
excrements, taken out and washed to satisfy their disti'cssing 
hunger. 

Tliatfor inquiring of Lieutenant "Whitney, of Rochester, New 
York, for some clothes which the deponent believed were sent 
to him in a box, the deponent was confined three days in a dun-, 
geon and fed on bread and water. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL AV^AE. 131 

That two men in ward twenty-two were starved until they cat 
a dog, for which offence they were severely punished. 

That negroes were placed on guard. That while on guard, a 
negro called a prisoner over the dead line, which the prisoner 
did not recognize as such, and the negro shot him dead, and 
went unpunished. 

That shooting prisoners without cause or provocation, was of 
frequent occurrence by the negro guards. 

" This aliidavit was taken before Dan'l Jackson, Justice of the 
Peace. 

Joseph Hetterphran, from Fayetteville, Georgia, writes that 
he was captured on the 27th of January, 18G4, in East Tennes- 
see; searched and robbed with his companions of everything. 
They were hurried by forced marches to Knoxville, nearly frozen 
and starved ; were then confined in the penitentiary, where the 
treatment all the time grew worse ; were finally taken to Rock 
Island, where he had no blanket, was stinted in fuel, food and 
raiment. In this horrible place the prisoners ate dogs and rats. 
The poor fellows tried to get the cruml)s that fell from the bread 
wagons ; a great many died of diseases induced by starvation : 
others starved outright. In the meantime the sutler would sell 
provisions to the rich Confederates, v/hilst the poor were driven 
to starvation. This prison Avas guarded by negroes for a consid- 
erable time. The negroes frequently siiot the prisoners down 
through wantonness, just as they did at Elmira. The officer 
who led negroes to kill the people of his own race, can sink to 
no lower depth of degradation. 

Henry J. Moses writes from Woodbine, Texas, that he was 
taken prisoner at Gaines' Farm, near Richmond, Virginia, and 
confined at Point Lookout during the month of May, 1864, and 
then taken to Fort Delaware, where he remained until the 24th 
of August. When Gen. Foster demanded the removal of six 
hundred of the prisoners, they were placed on board the steamer 
Crescent, and kept in the hold seventeen days, suffocating with 
heat, drinking bilge water, and eating salt pork and crackers in 
very stinted allowances. The hatchway was frequently closed, 
and all of the horrors of the African slave trade revived in their 
persons and treatment. After enduring this terrible form of 



132 CKIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

torture, they "were placed on Morris Island, under the fire of 
their own guns for forty-three days, guarded by negroes. The 
dead-line rope was sti-etched as a pretext for shooting those who 
should even by accident touch it. Taunts, gibes, jeers, and in- 
sults of every kind were heaped upon the prisoners. Paul H. 
Earle, of Alabama, for no offence whatever, was shot at; another 
time the tent was fired into, and two sleeping soldiers badly 
wounded, by order of the Lieutenant. As it always has been 
and ever will be, the negroes behaved much better than the white 
fiends who commanded them. How could it be otherwise? A 
man raised in Christian communities who would let loose bar- 
barians to burn up and destroy the habitations of women and 
children of his own race, has not one conceiveable iota of space 
in which to sink deeper in degradation. 

After all of the acts of cruelty and ingenuity to starve these 
poor fellows, they were finally confined in Fort Pulaski, fed 
upon a pint of musty kiln-dried corn, with a rotten pickle each 
day. On this diet they were kept for forty-four days, when the 
scurvy broke out and killed over two hundred of the number. 
After such loathesorae suffering as makes human nature shudder, 
incarcerated in damp cells without blankets, some with no coats, 
Mr. Moses adds that "nothing but the preserving hand of God 
kept us thi'ough those trying hours." How much greater was 
the crime of a Christian people, that the ministry in the peace- 
ful regions were inflaming, this horrible work instead of allevia- 
ting the sufferings of the people. Added to all of the other 
atrocious crimes and cruelties, the insane were in like manner 
tortured. An old gentleman named Fitzgerald, infirm and in- 
sane, who ate opium to alleviate his pain, was denied his medi- 
cine for Avhicli he begged, until death kindly came to open the 
prison doors and release him from his agony. The prisoners say 
that Foster instigated these cruelties. The names and references 
of the parties clothe the whole statement with an unmistakeable. 
semblance of truth. The corroboration is conclusive. 

John L. Waring, of Brandywine, Prince George's county, 
Maryland, states that he was a prisoner of war for more than 
two years : that a private soldier killed in his presence an inof- 
fensive prisoner in Carroll prison, who sat by the window, and 
was promoted from the ranks, to corporal, for the crime. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 133 

Forney's Chronicle, in noticing the death, and apologizing for 
the crime, falsely stated that young Hardcastle, the prisoner 
killed, was cursing the guard. 

The room-mate of Hardcastle, who, like Hardcastle, had been 
arrested upon no charges whatever, soon after this murder was 
released, but died shortly after in consequence of the cruel prison 
treatment. 

Mv. Waring was removed from Carroll prison to Point Look- 
out, where the prisoners were detailed to load and unload vessels; 
were robbed by negroes of the trinkets made in prison ; some 
were shot by negroes, carpet eacks Avere robbed of clothing, and 
hospital stewards and sanitary commissions ate the provisions 
sent to prisoners and soldiers, or extorted exorbitant prices from 
the person to whom they had been sent. 

The negroes offered every manner of indignity to the prison- 
ers. Among other crimes they shot a dying man on his attempt to 
relieve nature. The conduct of the negroes at Point Lookout 
was incited by their white officers until it was frightful. 

Henry H. Knight writes from Gary, "Wake county, North 
Carolina, that he was captured at Gettysburg, taken to Fort 
Delaware, and suffered all that cold and mud could inflict upon 
their comfort and convenience. He was driven from poorly 
warmed stoves by Federal officers. The soldiers were beaten, 
starved and frozen to death. Seven were frozen one morning; 
others of them went to the hospital and died. At other times 
they were driven through the water, and were alternately robbed, 
frozen, tortured and starved. The great amount sent them by 
relatives was appropriated by the guards for their own use; and 
if they made complaint, the prisoners were shot, and the improb- 
able story told that they had run guard, and that Avould be the 
last of their crime heard in the Fort against the guards. 

Some of these poor fellows were whole days without tire, when 
the snow was a foot deep, or the water covering the ground. 
The author saw hundreds of these prisoners in the city of Pitts- 
burg in the early summer of 18G5, on their way to the South- 
west, in the most loathesome condition. Their pitiable suffering 
and mournful stories were sickening, and would crimson the 
cheek with unutterable shame and horror. No words can por- 



]34 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

tray the picture that lie saw with his own eyes. Swollen gums, 
teeth dropping from the jaws, eyes bursting with scurvy, limbs 
paral3'zed, hair ialling off of the heads, frozen hands and feet. 
These were those that escaped. The dead concealed the crimes 
of the murderers in the grave which was closed upon them, by 
hundreds. 

W. C. Osborn, of Opelika, Alabama, states that he was cap- 
tured on the 4th of July, 1863, and confined in Fort Delaware; 
that the rations were three crackers twice a day ; most of the' 
time no meat at all, but occasionally a very small piece of salt 
beef or pork. That he drank water within fifteen feet of the 
excrement of the Fort, and could get no other. When cold 
weather returned, the beds of each man were searched, and only 
one blanket left him. The barracks were inferior, and men 
frozen to death in the terrible Avinter of 1863-4. Prisoners were 
shot for the most trivial offences. One man's brains were blown 
out and scattered on the walls, where they remained for many 
days, for no offence other than looking over the bounds, uncon- 
sciously. For other offences, men M-ere tied up by the thumbs 
just so that their toes might touch the ground, for three hours 
at a time, until they would turn black in the face. Others were 
placed astride of joists, and forced to remain in that attitude for 
hours at a time, the coldest weather. These crimes against the 
persons of the prisoners, and their starvation, were carefully 
concealed from the public eye, and the Philadelphia papers 
made every effort to deceive the public in regard to these mat- 
ters. On inspection days, when the people were admitted to 
the grounds, the prisoners got three times as much as upon 
other days. This Avas done to delude the people of the country, 
who never had any sympathy Avith these horrible crimes. 

Presley N. Morris, of Henry county, Georgia, Avas captured 
by AVilder's brigade, AA'as diA'Csted of everything, marched five 
days on one meal each day, carried through filthy cars to Camp 
Morton, Indiana, on the 19th of October, 1863, Avhere he Avas 
imprisoned in an old horse stable on the Fair ground, Avithout 
blanket, thinly clad, and Avithout fire, until January, 1864, Avhen 
lie received one blanket ; his body covered Avith rags and A'cr- 
min, Avlicn the snow Avas from six to ten inches deep. Two 



CHIMES OF THE CIVIL AVAR. 135 

stoves were all that was used to warm three huntlrcd men, and 
then wood for half the time only was allowed. The prisoners 
were compelled to remain out in the cold in this condition from 
nine o'clock, A. M., to four o'clock, P. M., no difference what 
was the condition of the weather. In October, 1864, the i3rison- 
ers were drawn up in line, stripped of all their bedding, except 
one blanket, and robbed of all money ; and hie. ^Morris was 
robbed of three hundred dollars, with other valuables, none of 
which were ever returned ; was beaten over the head because a 
piece of money was found near his feet, by one Fifer. Money 
sent him was purloined by the officei'S through whose hands it 
came. 

Another says be belonged to Grigsby's regiment ; was sent to 
Camp INIorton ; and corroborates the statement of Mr. Morris in 
regard to Camp Morton. He "was soon, after his capture, sent to 
Camp Douglas near Chicago. In this place tlie prisoners were 
shot at by sharpshooters and Indians ; sometimes were kept in 
close confinement for forty-eight hours. Sometimes a half-dozen 
prisoners were placed upon a rude machine called " JMorgan's 
horse," which was very sharp, and compelled to sit more than 
two hours at a time, with weights to their legs. Others were 
tied up by their thumbs. They were searched once every week. 
The prisoners were whipped with leather straps and sticks, after 
the manner of whipping brutes. Upon one occasion, when a 
guard discovered a beef-bone thrown from the window of num- 
ber six, he made all of the prisoners form in line and touch the 
ground Avith the fore finger Avithout bending the knee. All 
Avho could not do this Avere beaten. A young man Avas shot for 
picking up snow to quench his thirst, Avhen the hydrant had 
been closed for several days. New and cruel punishments AA^ere 
inflicted, as Avhim, passion, or pure malignity indicated. 

Wm. Howard, a Baptist minister, sixty years of age, of 
Graves county, Kentucky, AA'as taken, with his daughters, and 
beaten OA'cr the head with a sabre, until the sabre Avas broken ; 
and he Avas otherAA^ise cruelly treated. 

Lucius T. Harding Avrites that on the 14th of October, the 
large steamer General Foster came to his place. The sailors 
entered the house, kicked his sick children, and robbed him of 



136 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAIl 

everything. That white officers led negro raids into Westmore- 
land and Richmond counties. Women were violated wherever 
they were caught by the negroes, with the utmost impunity. 

N. D. Hall, of Larkinville, Alabama, a soldier of Western 
Virginia, during Hunter's, Crook's and Averill's horrible desola- 
tion of Virginia, says that the rebels found a negro man and 
child, both dead, and a negro woman stripped naked^ whose 
bleeding person had been outraged by Averill's men. 

That Averill's men offered to give to Dr. Patton's wife, in 
Greenbrier county, West Virginia, fifteen negro children which 
they had stolen, and which she refused to take from them. To 
rid themselves of the burden, and the children from suffering, 
they were thrown into Greenbrier river. 

In the valley below Staunton, Crook's men tied an old gen- 
tleman, and violated liis only daughter in his presence, until she 
fainted. 

In Bedford county he saw the corpse of one, and the other 
sister a raving maniac, from violation of their persons. Desola- 
tion was left in the trail of these men. 

An aged and respectable minister was hanged in Middletown, 
Va., by military order, for shooting a soldier in the attempt to 
violate his daughter in his own house in Greenbrier county. 

David Nelson, of Jackson, was shot because his son was in 
the Confederate army. 

Another person named Peters, a mere boy, \vas shot for hav- 
ing a pistol hidden. 

Garland A. Snead, of Augusta, Ga., said he was taken prison- 
er at Fisher's Hill, Va., September, 1864; sent to Point Look- 
out, which was in the care of one Brady, who had been an offi- 
cer of negro cavalry. 

He was starved for five days, had chronic diarrhoea; was 
forced to use bad water, the good water being refused them. 
Men died frequently of sheer neglect. He was sent off to make 
room for other prisoners, because he was believed to be in a dy- 
ing condition; as it was manifestly the purpose to poison all that 
could be destroyed by deleterious food and water, or by neglect 
of their wants. 

He said that negroes fired into their beds at night; and one 
was promoted for killing a prisoner, from the ranks to seigeant. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 137 

Claiborne Snecd, of Augusta, Ga., writes from Johnson's Isl- 
and : that prisoners were frequently shot without an excuse ; 
that prisoners having the small pox, were brought to Johnson's 
Island on purpose to inoculate the rest of the prisoners, and that 
many died of that disease ; a crime for which civilized govern- 
ment visits the most terrible penalties. Yet this disease, thus 
planted, was kept there until it had spent its force. 

That the rations were bad, and prisoners went to bed suifering 
the pangs of hunger. 

That although Lake Erie was not one hundred yards distant, 
yet these prisoners were forced to di-ink from three holes dug in 
the prison bounds, surrounded by twenty-six sinks, the filth of 
which oozed into the water. This treatment, in no wise better 
than the inoculation of small pox, and even more loathsome than 
that disease, caused many prisoners to contract chronic diarrhcca 
in a country where that disease is not common. 

It is impossible for human language to portray the horrible crim- 
inality of the wicked men who inflicted these tortures upon hu- 
man beings, and at the same time caused the detention of North- 
ern prisoners in loathesome Southern prisons, through a fiendish 
love of suffering ; and the unwillingness to have exchanges, paroles 
and releases granted to the unfortunate, innocent men of both 
armies, unnaturally led to mutual destruction? What apology 
can the infidel ministry of the country offer for such crimes? 
and upon their head must the curse ever rest who sustained these 
thieves. 

J. C. Moore, son of Col. David IMoore, of the Federal army, 
writes that he Avas taken prisoner at Helena, Arkansas, July 4, 
1863, with 1750 prisoners. The poor fellows, half starved, were 
met at St. Louis by a supply of apples, cakes, tobacco and 
money. The officer having them in charge threatened the boys 
with imprisonment, who extended these friendships to these un- 
fortunate men. That he was taken to the Alton prison, where 
men were kept with ball and chain at work in the street, for 
mere peccadilloes, where the keepers shot their victims and stab- 
bed them, with all of the indignities usual in the jirisons every- 
where, which seemed under control of no military^ but rather 
governed by the instigation of the devil. 



138 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

L. P. Hall and Wm. Periy, of Chico Butte, California, were 
arrested ; had their press destroyed ; were handcuffed together in 
Jackson, Aniada county, Avith ball and cliain attached to their 
legs, and driven to labor on the Public Works at Alcatross. 
Fifty-two others were treated in like manner. Hall and Perry 
were finally discharged without charges or trial. In the persons 
of these gentlemen, were violated all the rights of freedom of 
person, of the jjress, of speech, and finally they were starved, 
and released after enduring the most offensive insults at the 
hands of a cowardly enemy. This crime transpired in Califor- 
nia, Avhere war had not gone, and their imprisonment was with- 
out pretence. 

T. Walton Mason, of Adairville, Logan Co., Ky., says that 
he was surrendered by Gen. Jno. Morgan in Ohio, July 26th, 
1863, and imprisoned at Camp Chase, then removed to Camp 
Douglas, where all of the horrors of that place were revived. 
In this camp Choctaw Indians were employed as guards. When 
money was given to the guards to buy provisions, they would 
pocket the money. The Indians shamed the whites for this 
breach of faith and petty theft. In November, 1863, seven 
escaped prisoners were returned, and subjected to the most cruel 
torture. They were taken out in the presence of the garrison 
and tortured with the thumb-screw until they fainted with pain. 

In February, 1864, the cruelty became extreme; they beat pris- 
oners with clubs and a leather belt, with a U. S. buckle at the end 
of it. They shot prisoners without provocation. For spilling the 
least water on the floor, the prisoner Avas elevated on a four inch 
scantling fifteen feet high, and tortured for two or three hours. 
For any similar offence, when the perpetrator Avas not known, 
the whole regiment was marched out and kept in the cold all 
day, sometimes freezing their limbs in the effort. Because a sick 
man vomited on his floor, the whole of the prisoners, in the dead 
hour of a chilling cold night, were made to stand out in their 
night clothes, until frozen, and from which several died, Avhilst 
others lost their health, which they never recovered. 

Mr. Mason was driven by this night's cruelty into the hospi- 
tal, Avhere, among empyrics, he refused to take their medicines; 
in turn his own physician was not alloAved to see him. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 139 

From twelve to thirty prisoners died every day, during the 
months of July, August, September and October, from brutal 
treatment. 

When James Wandle, a Virginia giant near seven feet high, 
died, through neglect in the hospital, the ward-master could 
not lay him in the small coffin which was furnished, but his 
body in a most brutal manner was stamped down into its nar- 
row limits to ])repare it for the grave. 

Such were the every day affairs of this loathesome place. 

Again, in the coldest winter night, the prisoners were aroused 
and driven out in the storm barefooted, in their night clothes, 
and made to sit down until the snow melted under them. 

Late in December, several hundred prisoners came from Hood's 
army, near Nashville, almost destitute of clothing ; coming from 
a warm climate, they were kept out all night in the cold, shiver- 
ing and freezing. Upon the next morning, nearly one hundred were 
sent to the hospital. As a consequence, many of their limbs 
Avere frozen and required amputation, and death kindly came 
to the relief of all. 

J. Risque Hutter, late Lieutenant-Colonel 11th Regiment 
Virginia Infantry, writes that he was captured at Gettysburg, 
and was eighteen months in prison on Johnson's Island. 

During the tyranny of a fellow of the name of Hill, rations 
were reduced and stinted ; that prisoners were neglected in sick- 
ness ; straw and other necessaries were declared contraband. 

That suifering from thirst was common, right on " the shores 
of the lake-bound prison." 

That the rations were indifferent in quality and insufficient in 
quantity to satisfy hunger. Rats were eaten by hundreds of 
prisoners, Avho regarded themselves fortunate to get them, such 
was the reduced condition of the prisoners. 

That Colonel Hutter's brother, an officer in the Confederate 
army, on duty in Danville, Virginia, went to Lieutenant Bing- 
ham and agreed to furnish them with all of the comforts of life, 
if he would have the necessaries furnished Colonel Hutter 
through his friends at home. Colonel Hutter had Lieutenant 
Bingham furnished with everything he desired, and when ar- 
rans^ements were made to furnish similar articles to Colonel 



140 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

Hutter, in Johnson's Island, Hill would not permit it. When 
the matter was referred to Washington, the refusal was sustained. 

The above abbreviated statement has been made from ably- 
written details of individual wrongs — each gentleman giving 
name, date, place and specific charges. The latter would make 
a large bound volume of itself, which a want of space only 
apologizes for the abridgment. 

JohnM. Weinerwas formerly Mayor of the City of St. Louis, 
was arrested in that city and kept in prison without any charges 
against him whatever. After the cruel treatment common to 
St. Louis prisons, lie M'as transferred to Alton penitentiary, and 
from there made his escape, and was killed near Springfield, 
Missouri. 

Mrs. Weiner sent for her husband's body for burial in Bella- 
fontaine Cemetery. Whilst his wife and friends were preparing 
his body for burial Samuel R. Curtis sent a squad of soldiers 
who stole the corpse I'rom his wife, and buried it in a secret 
place. 

Mrs. Beatty was arrested for begging the release of ISIayor 
Wolf, who was sentenced to be shot in retaliation. Wolf was 
respited and then exchanged; but Mrs. Beatty was put in 
prison, manacled, shackled, and chained with a heavy ball until 
the iron cut through her tender limbs, and the flesh rotted be- 
neath the irons, until she was attacked with chills; and in a lone 
cell, not permitted to see a human being, Avhen her mind gave way 
under the terrible treatment. The surgeon protested against 
this vicious cruelty ; still it was continued, until the very sight 
of the poor creature was frightful. So she continued until 
Rosecrans was removed. After llosecrans was broken down 
in the army, like Burnside, he tried to retrieve his lost fortunes 
by cruelty, but failed. Neither the release of Strachan from the 
penalties of the court martial for his participation in the McXeil 
murders, and robbery and rape of Mrs. Mary Humphries; nor 
his barbarity could save him from the contempt of the radicals. 
After his brutalities in these cases, the Democrats loathed him, 
and he now lies hidden among the rubbish of the war, 'mid the 
remnants of abandoned barracks, rusty guns and broken wagons, 
to be heard of no more forever. Mrs. Beatty was tried by court 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 141 

martial and acquitted, but will wear the marks of cruelty to 
the grave. 

One of the most horrible murders of the State of INIissouri, 
was that committed by an old counterfeiter named Babcock, who 
shot Judge Wright and liis three sons, after decoying them from 
their own door. The details are too horrible for human pen. 

This wretched criminal, Babcock, was elected to the Legis- 
lature by disfranchising the people of his county by military 
force. 

This murderer is a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Churcli, 
and dispenses the Gospel to the people. ^^ 

Through disgust, horror and shame, I cast my pen aside, and 
sit in amazement, that for crimes like these an angry God has 
not by His breath, cursed the earth, and sent it as a floating pan- 
demonium throughout the immensity of space, as a warning to 
other worlds, if other worlds there be so depraved, corrupted 
and lost to the charities of life and the mercies of God. 

Dr. Gideon S. Bailey in wealth and character, is one of the 
finest citizens of the State of Iowa. He had attended Abraham 
Lincoln's reputed father in his last illness for many months, and 
had received not one cent in compensation. Yet Dr. Bailey was 
arrested, placed in the very same filthy place in which the author 
was imprisoned, and kept there for a number of days. 

The weather was exceedingly sultry ; Dr. Bailey was in very 
feeble health, when he was carried down to Saint Louis on the 
hurricane deck of a steamer. AVhen in St. Louis, he Avas placed 
in Gratiot street prison, where he was subjected to every manner 
of filth, torture and suffering. 

The debt due him for the attendance upon Mr. Lincoln, re- 
mains unpaid ; though the doctor will bear the efiects of liis in- 
carceration to the grave. 



142 CKIMES OF THE CIVIL AVAR. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Overthrow of the Constitution of the United States. 

The evil M-hich the war assumed to arrest, was a part of the 
Constitution of the country, not to be reached by war, because 
the Constitution prescribed the laws of war, and could not be 
supposed to make Avar upon itself. 

It Avas a Avar of States, Avith all of its attendant evils in Avhich 
the gOA'crnraent Avas guilty of usurpation. If it be granted that 
a goA'ernment of Avritten laAV, deriving its authority from the 
consent of the people and embodying its powers in a specific 
constitution, may be destroyed by an army raised by itself for its 
own protection under a \'ague Avar power, then constitutional 
government contains the elements of inevitable self-destruction 
and is of no value Avhatever. 

If it be conceded that such an anomaly as a Avar poAA'cr may 
exist, independent of written constitutions, then Ave have no gov- 
ernment, but are simply ruled by arbitrary poAver. We may as 
justly repeat this to correct a political Avrong and triplicate it to 
cure a moral evil. But if aa'c are to folloAV out the analogy, we 
must alloAV a fcAV over-heated zealots to judge of the time, place 
and occasion of Avar. If this be granted, the country Avill be in- 
volved in perpetual Avar, and the habitations of enlightened na- 
tions desolated under the empty pretence of reform, until there 
Avould not be a painting, poem, or printed leaf spared by the in- 
vader's hoof and torch to mark the faintest outlines of civiliza- 
tion. For if this shalloAv subterfuge be alloAA'ed, everything is 
surrendered. 

To create Avars upon moral pretence is to overturn the moral 
laAV, the source and the foundation of all laws, and Christianity, 
the standard by Avhich every good must be measured. When 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 143 

the supreme law of the universe is made and unmade to gratify 
the whims and passions of the wicked, then we have nothing 
left on earth to preserve its peace. 

Each war lays the foundation of other and more malignant 
quarrels out of which other wars grow, until the people will 
estimate the attributes of manhood by the tenacity of the bull- 
dog, the ferocity of the tiger, and the hyena's thirst for blood. 

Each war brings with it an increasing corresponding waste in 
positive and relative expenses, with an increasing recklessness of 
the powers that hold the purse and command the sword in 
exact inverse ratio, as the government is unable to carry on the 
war with a metallic currency or paper money issued upon a specie 
basis. 

If the principles be established upon which the late war was 
incited and prosecuted, the reconstruction of republican govern- 
ment is complete, and it must not be overlooked that the elements 
of war are always on hand. Political and military leaders stand 
waiting with arguments for precipitating war. Thousands of 
fanatics in every country, would gladly crush out every form of 
religion -which they may deem offensive to their convictions of 
doctrine, sacraments, or minor forms. 

For this purpose they would appeal to God and insist 
that his glory was involved in the issue ; that the nation's honor 
was imperilled and subjected to the most terrible scourges of 
heaven. Each of these bands of fanatics would involve us in 
war, which, commencing to-morrow, would last a hundred ages ; 
and at the end these fiends would still thirst for blood and hunt 
their prey like famished wolves let loose upon sheep folds. 
These wars, M'hich are each as legitimate as the other, would in- 
volve the people to such a train of insolvencies as bewilders the 
powers of calculation. These curses are transmitted without a 
single blessing, mixed or unmixed, with all of their attending 
evils which always precede and inevitably follow revolutions and 
civil war. 

These doctrines have involved us in a system of financial crime, 
following the worst precepts of the worst governments of the 
world iu the line of their most dangerous precedents ; whilst we 



144 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

are copying implicitly the most odious of their worst administra- 
tions. There has been none more pernicious than the one re- 
vived after having been exploded at least once in every genera- 
tion. That Me have a right to transmit a debt to posterity for 
payment of war^ of revenge and reforms by wars. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1^5 



CHAPTEE XV. 



Degradation of the Judiciary. 



The virtue of woman, the honor of soldiers, and the piety of 
the pulpit, are not more essential to the preservation of liberty 
than is the purity of the judiciary. 

Among all of the crimes, misfortunes and blunders of the last 
five years, there has been nothing so deplorable as the stains 
which have fallen upon the ermine of the American judiciary. 

Our early history was marked by the purity and power, intel- 
ligence and integrity of the bench, which contributed to the 
highest of all human offices, the good name of Marshal Kent 
Story, Rawle, Tucker and Taney. 

Only one attempt at impeachment occurred, which was the 
earnest effort of the people to preserve their liberties against ju- 
dicial encroachment. 

For the most trifling peccadlloes, judges were called to account; 
and Judge Addison, otherwise a learned jurist, was dismissed 
for the arbitrary exercise of legitimate powers. 

It was the highest purpose of our political system to preserve 
the purity of the judicial robes from every pollution. 

Our early judges were not speculators, peculators, or politi- 
cians ; never interfered with elections, or made political speeches. 
No supreme judge was ever nominated for any other office. 

Although the bench was filled with our oldest statesmen, the 
magistrate, whose duty it Avas not bear the sword of God in vain, 
retired from the outer world ; and closing his eyes to passion, in- 
terest or prejudice, poised the even balances, and closed his eyes, 
that he might see no person ; closed his ears, that he might hear 
no human voice ; forgot his friejids and enemies, kindred and 
strangers ; opened his mind to the lucid light which fell from 
the throne of justice, and determined his judgment. 
10 



146 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Every American justice felt security in the protection of the 
unstained escutcheon of the Supreme Court of the United States. 

The purity of the judiciary, with the confidence of the people, 
extended to the inferior courts of the State, and were well main- 
tained together. 

The change was abrupt, violent and startling in the courts ; as 
it had before been in every other department. The men of char- 
acter, ability and learning, had all disappeared in the clouds that 
hung over the scenes of our opening civil war, and were lost in 
the long continued conflict. 

Taney passed away ; Curtis resigned ; M'Lean died, and Camp- 
bell, the ablest of the younger members of the court, left with 
the State of Alabama, in the secession from the Union. 

The old Supreme Court, which, in stately poverty, independent 
of Presidents and Congress, foreign courts, and funded debts, sat 
to determine the difficulties of the people. 

It seemed almost a dream that there was a body of pure men, 
unbought by money, unmoved by passion, unciianged by fear, 
who determined the causes of the people, guarded the outposts 
of liberty, and defended the Constitution. 

The arm that closed the door of that reverend temple of jus- 
tice against the poor, and thrust out these grave arbiters, com- 
mitted such a crime as may scarcely ever find repetition among 
us. It were impossible to name the imbecile, wicked men who 
now fill these places. Many volumes might enumerate, but not 
detail, the crimes committed, the woes inflicted, the robberies ap- 
proved, and the sufferings entailed upon the country by the wick- 
edness, negligence, and pusillanimity of the judiciary which now 
offends the very name of justice in every part of the country. 

The exemplification of the general crime and profligacy in the 
judiciary, its insolence, pretension, incompetence and dishonesty, 
could scarcely be more perfect than is afforded in the arrest, treat- 
ment, torture, farce and false pretence, in the case of Mr, Jeffer- 
son Davis, late President of the Confederate States. 

It is, however, but one of many and not the greatest instances 
of the insecurity of the people. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 147 



THE TRIAL OF MR. JEFFERSON DAVIS THE DEPLORARLE CON- 

DITIOX OF THE AMERICAN JUDICIARY THE HYPOCRISY 

AND INCOMPETENCY OF S. P. CHASE. 

After the conclusion of the late war, every good man hoped, 
as a source of consolation, that quiet, peace and good will would 
return to the country. Every government of modern times had 
set the example of general amnesty, and it seemed but the exer- 
cise of the simplest common sense for President Johnson to pave 
the way for general prosperity and universal harmony by a gen- 
eral amnesty. This he did not do. Following the bad advice 
of the prince of liars and cunning demagogues, Seward, and 
under the dictation of the monster Stanton, Mr. Johnson let go 
by the golden opportunity of proclaiming the oblivion of all the 
unhappy past. For two long years the world was sliocked at 
the refined cruelty visited upon Mr. Davis after his arrest. The 
government lent its countenance to the slander of himself and 
family ; that he was a coward, dressed in woman's clothes, not- 
withstanding he wore upon his person scars inflicted by enemies 
whilst fighting under the colors of the old United States on the 
bloody battle-fields of Mexico. His pure and excellent father, 
who had been a Revolutionary soldier and many years in his 
grave, was slandered as a desjierate character. AVhen imprisoned 
contrary to the usages of civilized warfare in dealing with such 
prisoners, he was ironed most rudely, and without any justifica- 
tion, offered the harshest indignities by the lowest and most cow- 
ardly wretches. For two long years the most horrible tortures 
ever offered to a dying man — worse than the thumb-screw or 
boot, because more exquisite and enduring — were inflicted upon 
this prisoner. Being nearly blind, and his eyes painfully sensi- 
tive to the light, the glaring painful rays were thrown upon 
them for two long years. Having suffered for a quarter of a 
century from the most excruciating nervous disease, the rough, 
rude tread of the soldier re-echoed in the vaults of the damp 
and gloomy prison from morning till night, from night till morn- 
ing, each day hoping that this slow, acute, distressing torture 
would bereave him of his reason, and give to the ghouls a pre- 
text for declaring him insane for his treason, or that he might 
die on their hands. He was subjected to such treatment as the 
vilest outcast prisoners are never made to endure ; was not 
allowed for a time the use of knives and forks, and ate his rude 
meals with his fingers. That he might be bereft of the privilege 
of seeing a human face, or hearing the human voice, the guard 



148 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

were not allowed to speak to liim. After an imprisonment of 
two such years as only the English prison ships or the black 
hole of Calcutta could equal, he was led out under pretence of 
trial. Attorney General Speed says that he preserved him Irom 
a military butchery at the hands of Stanton. A reward was 
offered for ISIr. Davis, as a conspirator assisting in the death of 
President Lincoln. Among all of the perjured Conovers, none 
could be hired to swear again^t him; among all the suborning 
Ashleys, there was none to })rocure witnesses for the purpose, until 
the trial was abandoned. Finally, wdien insulted humanity be- 
gan to complain, outraged decency hung her head and justice 
shrieked in agony at such crimes as made angels weep, a trial was 
proposed for Mr. Davis. In all this time the Northern Protes- 
tant clergy were crying for blood and executions, praying for the 
death of Mr. Davis and the damnation of rebels. 

In all these continued outrages, not one word was uttered for 
mercy, humanity, or civilization. The preachers exceeded all 
bounds of vindictiveness. Like the medicine-men of the Indians, 
or like the priests of the Grand Llama, or like the conjurers 
among the Mokalolo negroes, to whose place they aspired, the 
preachers each to exceed the others, and all to join in one general 
outcry for revenge, blood and brutality, justified every crime 
that was committed against a feeble old man, tottering on the 
verge of the grave, whose only crime Avas that he accepted an 
office at the hands of the people who had determined to erect a 
new government; and who was just as guilty and no more than 
every other person partici[)ating in the revolution precipitated by 
the wickedness of such men as Wade, Chase, John Brown, Ger- 
rit Smith and Garrison, and resisted by Davis, Toombs, &c. 

When the trial was proposed, objections were raised every- 
where among the persecutors to a trial in the civil courts. After 
a long conflict, it was finally concluded to enact this farce in the 
city of Richmond, early in the Spring of 1867. The history of 
the bail bond, Greeley, c^^c, is before the country. 

After the trial of Mr. Davis was agreed upon, it was a matter 
of dispute before whom it should take place. The old and able 
District Judges of Virginia were moved during the civil war. In 
fact, if Virginia is not a State, within the meaning of that term 
of the Constitution of the United States, how can there be Uni- 
ted States District Judges in A'irginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Flor- 
ida, Arkansas or Alabama? How can the New York shyster, 
Dick Busteed, be District Judge in the State of Alabama, if Ala- 
bama is not a State? — and why should such an irresponsible 
vulgarian fill such a place against the will of a people who have, 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 149 

in their own community, able Judges of the common law, Avho 
would have dignified and adorned tlie British or American judi- 
ciary at any period of its history? If it is rejilied that these 
2)ure and able men were not loyal, and that the loyal men of 
Alabama had neither sense, decency nor dignity, then it is far 
better for the cause of justice and truth, that decent, honest reb- 
els be appointed to do justice between man and man, than that the 
sinks of New York be dragged — that its shysters, pettifoggers 
and barraters be searched for the lowest, meanest, most abandoned 
and abominable among them, to be sent to a distant land to eat 
oysters, levy black-mail and ])retend to be Judges in a State 
that is not a State, in a court that is not a court, according to 
laws that are not laws — or that are suspended as laws. In the 
State of Virginia — where Jefferson Davis was indicted, but 
Avliich the prosecutors say is not a State — the late President ap- 
pointed one John C. Underwood to preside in a judicial district 
which is not by law a judicial district. 

The qualifications of this creature Underwood to preside over 
the trial of Mr. Davis or any other person in court, is very 
clearly analysed as follows : 

He is a sham Judge in Virginia, according to their own posi- 
tion, for no other reason than because he is not a Virginian. 

When everybody else was living in peace, quiet and harmony, 
this Underwood had rendered himself so obnoxious to the peo- 
ple by his association with negroes, and stirring up strife and in- 
surrection, that he was intolerable, and excluded the society of 
gentlemen, for which he had no earthly qualification. But he 
was grieved that the people would give him no plausible excuse 
for fleeing as a martyr from home. Because they would not, he 
went North and declared himself a martyr to liberty ! The New 
York Tribime and other Northern pa})ers manufactured a mar- 
tyr of him. But nobody killed him, nobody hurt him, nobgdy 
cared for him. He was secure in the public contempt. 

Underwood formerly kept a stand of second-hand books in 
the street stalls of New York, it is said; and failing to mend his 
fortunes at that business, went to Virginia, where he became 
a lawyer under the new state of things. As a lawyer nobody 
knows him, and everybody laughs at the idea of his being a law- 
yer at all. 

The measureless, atrocious corruption of this creature — if so 
stupid a person can be corrupt — is evinced in the confiscation 
sales, at which Underwood decreed forfeiture, bid in tlic })roper- 
ty, and confirmed the sales — by which he came into possession 
of property at ten per cent, of its true value. 



150 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 

This cliaracter of a judge would charitably preclude from his 
court any human being entitled to justice in either civil or crim- 
inal courts. Underwood, grossly ignorant and stupid as he 
might be, would be exceedingly harmless before an intelligent, 
old-fashioned Virginia jury, such as tried Aaron Burr, or were 
ordinarily summoned into the courts of John Marshall, Philip 
P. Barbour, Pennybacker or Brockenborough. 

But, as though to burlesque all the judiciary, and have Barney 
Williams in his comic character, play in the District Court where 
there is no district, this man Underwood summoned negro jury- 
men to sit upon the jury which was to try Mr. Davis, and 
actually liad them summoned for that purpose preparatory 
to the trial. The trial of Mr. Davis before Underwood by a 
negro jury Avould be such a farce as was never })layed beibre. 
Chandler, the District Attorney, or Speed, if he had been re- 
tained, would be in his element in such a place. 

These fellows, for the first time in their lives, could dictate 
laws to the courts. But when Charles O'Connor and Wm. B. 
Eeed would commence their argument, the scene would beggar 
all description. When these gentlemen Avould commence to 
quote authorities upou the law of nations, such as Paffendorf, 
Grotious, Burlamqui and Montesquieu, the judge would declare 
that he had never heard these judges before, and the negro jury- 
men would swear that they were Jews among the Dutch that had 
lately emigrated to Virginia ; whilst Chandler would porapously 
assume that such authorities were not allowable in an enlighten- 
ed court. 

But these Judges, Busteed and Chandler, are but a fair sam- 
ple of the new and shining lights that have been introduced into 
the reconstructed judiciary of the country. Sam Miller, of Iowa, 
and Judge of the North-western District, was formerly a 
Kentucky mountain doctor of but poor success in the medical 
profession. He read the Iowa code, was never in a legislative 
body, was never a judge in any of the State courts, had but a few 
years' practice, was quite ignorant of the common law. This 
Judge Miller is a sample, and quite an average of the late judi- 
cial appointments. 

But Mr. Davis' enemies actually became ashamed to have him 
tried before Judge Underwood, and tried to have Chase sit upon 
the trial. Chase testifies before the Impeachment Committee 
that he knew of no reason why Davis was not tried. Last spring 
Chase could not try him ; therefore the trial was postponed. In 
November, Chase could not try him; therefore the trial was 
postponed until March. In March, Chase was sitting on the 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL AVAR. 151 

Supreme Bencli, and tlierefore tlie trial was postponed again, 
and probably will continue to be postponed, unless President 
Johnson learns some sense, and to get rid of all this farce — 
hypocrisy and villainy — by a short cut, issues a general am- 
nesty proclamation, and invites all refugees home to attend to 
business, build up the country, and establish c^uiet, harmony and 
jjeace. 

Salmon P. Chase will defer sitting upon the trial of Davis as 
long as possible. 

There are many reasons why INIr. Chase does not desire to enter 
into such a trial. The first is, that Mr. Chase is not a profound, 
thoroughly read or extensively practiced lawyer. But he is a very 
shrewd man, and may direct attention from that fact, even on 
the Supreme Bench, surrounded as he is by very common-place 
men, and enlightened, as he always is, by the ablest members of 
the bar, such as Black, Cushing, and O'Connor. But in a case 
like the treason of Davis, Chase is not prepared for such .con- 
troversy as will be hurled into that great American conflict. 

Chase was never a lawyer of eminence in Ohio ; he rarely 
appeared before the Supreme Court, and was never ranked with 
Henry Stanbery, Thomas Ewing, Thurman, Judge McLean, 
Pugh, Banney, or the older and abler men of the Ohio bar. 
Chase is a politician merely. Unfortunately for himself in this 
trial, he is a revolutionist. Chase issued an inflammatory rev- 
olutionary address on Sunday against the Kansas-Nebraska bill. 
He, as Governor, Senator, and in every other position, took the 
highest States rights and secession grounds upon the subject of 
the resistance of the General Government by the States — re- 
fusing to obey requisitions, the return of fugitives from justice, 
and in every other essential feature of the destructive doctrines, 
Mr. Chase would justly rank with the secessionists. 

The country demands a fair trial before just and able judges. 
That this is not done is a scandal to the country, iu which Chief 
Justice Chase is the chief and guilty party.. 

During the whole period of the war the land was one grand, 
frightful, destroying mob. The Supreme Court sat quietly by 
the murderers and bade them God-speed. 

The writ of Habeas Corpus was denied to prisoners ; indeed, 
the imbecile old man who presided over the Southern District of 
Ohio gave, as a reason for refusal to issue the writ in the case of 
Mr. Vallandigham, that he feared the military interference ; and, 
like a school-boy, ran away from the bench and met the military 



152 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAr.. 

mob, to receive their congratulations and encourage them in their 
crimes against liberty. 

The men appointed to the Supreme Bench were zealous as 
fresh converts to the doctrines of arbitrary power. 

An infuriated mob of vagabond soldiers that lingered around 
the hospitals in Keokuk, assailed the house of Judge Clagett. 

The daughter of the Judge, in exceedingly feeble health, lying 
in bed in the dead hours of the night, was awakened by the 
firing of cannon, when the broken glass of the window fell upon 
her face and mangled her flesh, from which she never recovered, 
but which hastened her journey to the realms of light. 

After these mobs had gone the round, insulting and terrifying 
the people, they proceeded to receive the congratulations of Judge 
Miller, newly appointed to the Supreme Bench. 

The Judge congratulated and cheered these criminals in their 
lawless carousals. 

Among the new district appointees was Charles Sherman, of 
the Northern District of Ohio, who could not, at the peril of his 
salvation, have carried a case through the ordinary State Courts 
without assistance. This man, in the early part of the war, was 
engaged in a menial military service. 

When Judge Hall, of Bucyrus, was arrested, from the cruel- 
ties of which he died, this man Sherman declared that the ob- 
ject of these arrests was to make Democracy odious, and subject 
the Democrats to general denunciation. This man was a most 
busy and mischievous element of the Provost Marshal's espionage. 
Such was the selvage of the legal profession, that was by the 
most questionable means placed in tlie judgment-seat as guard- 
ians of your children, distributors of your estates, and the trus- 
tees of liberty upon the American continent. 

The destruction of the judiciary brings with it no compensa- 
tion itself to atone for the injuries inflicted upon the people. 

Self-respect alone preserves personal dignity and maintains 
personal honor. 

The judiciary of our ancestors yielded not to the command of 
kings, nor changed their verdict in the presence of armies. 

The just judge is God's vicegerent upon earth, clothed with 
divine powers, who bears not the s\Yord of God in vain. 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL AVAIL 153 

The American judiciary have broken down the lofty standard 
of justice, and dragged their holy ermine in the dust; like 
trembling sycophants they begged for peace and yielded up prin- 
ciples of justice, that the iron heart and the brazen face of the 
tyrants, supported by armies, could not wrench from our fathers. 

How inscrutably rewards follow works, must now be felt on 
every bench in the land. 

The decisions of the highest courts are treated with contempt, 
and the judges feel flattered that they are not hurried oif to the 
nearest prisons ; and have so abased themselves that they readdy 
approve the most disgraceful insults offered to the judicial ermine 
in every part of the country. Military Commissions, whose very 
existence has been declared unconstitutional, enforce their decis- 
ions to execution. In pursuance of these military usurpations, 
innocent men are pining away in loathesome prisons or enduring 
the most excruciating torture in lonely islands of the seacoast ; 
men who have never been tried or sentenced by any recognized 
court of competent authority, who have an inalienable right to 
the protection of law, for which the good name of the American 
government has been pledged in her Constitution, her laws, her 
treaties, her public declarations, and her diplomatic associations 
with the civilized world. 

Indignant justice turns her head away from the picture of her 
humiliation. 

The people avoid their ancient temple of security. Society 
shudders in contemplation of the startling truth, that the holy 
altars of justice have become a den of thieves. 



15 i CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTEE XVI. 



"The New Nation." 



There is this difference between the villain and the fool, that 
while the villain deceives other people, the fool deceives himself. 
This is also the difference between the hypocrite and the zealot; 
and these two form the body of every destructive revolution. 
The revolutionary character of the late war, and the revolution 
in our theory and form of governments, are as complete as force 
and purpose make them. 

The revolutionists in triumph have called this a " New Nation," 
not without reason. 

This name is significant of the entire abolition of our old civil 
governments in America. 

Since the year 1860 we have had three " New Nations," under 
their several governments de facto, with such thrilling termina- 
tions as startled mankind. 

The first of these was the Confederate States, over which Mr. 
Davis was elected President. 

The second, the Mexican empire under the assumed reign of 
Maxjanilian, who came from Austria to replant the European 
system upon the American continent, as the heir of Charles V, 
and protege of Louis Napoleon. 

The third was the usur[)ation of Abraliam Lincoln, wliieh 
entirely abrogated the Constitution of the United States and ruled 
the people by arbitrary power. 

The fate of these rulers is a most significant vindication of the 
law of God, that he who takes up the sword shall perish by the 
sword. 

The Confederate States were overthrown ; the President cap- 
tured ; imprisoned, chained, tortured and released on bail, after 



CTvIMES OF THE CIVIL "WAR. 155 

suffering ten thou.^and deaths at the hands of torturers, such as 
would have added cruelty to the reign of the Borgias. 

The people of the Confederate States have been abandoned to 
a system for which neither the history nor the philosophy of gov- 
ernment furnishes a name or a parallel. 

Under pretence of reconstructing the States of the Union, 
every vestige of liberty has been destroyed. 

The Itoconstruction Bill is the most monstrous crime of the 
Christian era. 

It is a crime against free government in this — that it disfran- 
chises without indictment, trial, or any other process of law, the 
learned, intelligent and highly cultivated citizens representing 
the business, manufactures, commerce, navigation and property of 
eleven millions of people who, from time immemorial, have been 
free. 

It is a crime against civilization in this — that it transfers the 
powers of legislation and administration from the violently dis- 
franchised intellect of the country, to the will, passion and vio- 
lence of the African barbarians; among them who trample down 
those glorious landmarks and eminent triumphs of progress which 
have cost centuries of labor and celebrates the genius of ages. 

It is a crime against Christianity in this — that it transfers 
the government of a Christian people to the control of a degraded, 
imbecile race of heathens, who yet retain the idolatry and super- 
stitions of the most revolting systems of heathen worship. 

It is a crime against reason in this, that it places bayonets in 
the hands of the unreasoning rabble, to destroy life, liberty and 
property at will, in violation of that established custom, among 
savage and civilized men, of committing the rule of tribes, na- 
tions and kingdoms, to the ablest and purest men. 

It is a crime against human nature, which commits its preser- 
vation to its most elevated and superior races, and the most emi- 
nent and trustworthy of every race, in this, that it degrades the 
highest type of the human family to a subordination to the very 
lowest species of the race of man. 

The Reconstruction Bill is in its details and execution more 
atrocious than any usurpation ever exercised by Great Britain 
over Ireland, by llussia over Poland, by Austria over Hungary, 



156 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR, 

cruel and abominable as they have been — in this, that the vnlers 
of these conquered people were of the same general race, customs, 
habits, religion and color, Avhilethe voters to whom is committed 
the rule of the people of the excluded States are of a different 
race, with no common sympathies, capacities, interests^ destinies 
or hopes. 

The Mexican empire was destroyed by the people ; the Em- 
peror summarily butchered by his military enemies, and the mon- 
grel savages of the country returned to their native element of 
anarchy. The third New Nation entirely destroyed constitu- 
tional government, introduced conscription, the old machinery of 
Eastern tyrants, and disintegrated the old State governments until 
nothing of the past remains. 

The wicked and unfortunate President, who declared himself 
above constitutions and laws, built a pyramidal throne upon 
bones and skulls, cemented by the blood of our citizens, which 
was undermined and fell. 

The usurper suffered that terrible retribution of God which 
no man escapes. 

" Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man also shall his blood be 
shed." 

How fearfully and how wonderfully has God punished the 
wicked men who have overthrown our American system of gov- 
ernment by consent. 

Lovejoy, who led the revolutionary van with a fiery, furious 
eloquence — the ablest of them all — departed in the midst of 
his years, after having laid down the cross to take up the sword. 

Next followed Baker, who left the heavenly avocation and 
abandoned the sword of the Spirit for " the bubble reputation in 
the cannon's mouth," was slaughtered on the battle-field, the 
victim of ferocious military imbecility. 

Winter Davis, who led the rabl)le mob of Baltimore for years, 
played spy upon his neighbors, until Baltimore ran red Avith 
blood, and in Chicago announced and advocated the horrible doc- 
trine of negro voting to retain political power, consumed by the 
vindictive fires of his own vengeance, is no more. 

Poor old Giddings was smitten down in a billiard saloon in a 
foreign land. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 157 

Gen. Lane, who ravaged Missouri, and kindled the first fires 
of the civil war, haunted by the apparitions of his murdered 
victims, wlio followed him day and night, blew out his own 
brains, and sought refuge in the midnight of eternity, where 
sunless regions would hide him from the frown of Heaven. 

Preston King sat guard at the portals of the White House on the 
day of the carnival which concluded the saturnalia of Lincoln's 
horrible reign of crime and terror. 

Poor Anna Surratt fell upon the door-steps of the Presiden- 
tial mansion, praying admission to pour her flood of tears upon 
the feet of an Executive, sworn to give every human being a 
fliir trial according to law, and plead in the car of God for jus- 
tice through His appointed vicegerent upon earth. 

The poor girl was thrust away from the outer door by the 
servant, who, smiling upon every one else, frowned upon her. 
In the inner chamber, sat King and the President, deaf to the 
appeals of law, justice, mercy, and human nature. 

Mrs. Surratt was arrested, insulted, manacled, shackled, tor- 
tured, murdered without law, without evidence, without a court, 
without trial. Florence, Turkey or Eussia, in their darkest 
days, might well have blushed at these proceedings. Only the 
Indians, Negroes and Chinese had given precedent for this new 
and horrible style of things. When on the scaffold, the coward- 
ly soldier appointed to the sickening, bloody work, thrust him- 
self between her and her priest, to suppress her dying declara- 
tion of innocence. She was entirely exculpated by Powell, who 
stabbed Seward. She brought up from the altars of God the 
testimonials of a devoted ministry to a spotless Christian life 
from childhood. Even the military commission, with cruel 
fanatics like Hunter, malignant creatures like Bingham, miser- 
able, sinister wretches like Eakin, and the abortionist and vil- 
lage-burner Harris, recommended her to mercy. The cold- 
blooded murderer Stanton, kept from the President the paper. 
The hypocritical villain Holt, all smeared with innocent blood, 
was ashamed of the murder of the woman. Preston King made 
the White House merry as on the day when Willie Lincoln 
mingled the suppressed groans of his last hours with the revelry 
of the ball-room beneath. This proved too much for King. 



158 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

When M'ine no longer inflamed his passions into hilarity, nor 
beclouded his understanding, his soul was seized with amaurosis. 
The rattling chains that bound her to the damp, gloomy cell ; 
the coarse, rough voice of the mercenaries, mellowed by contact 
with the silvery, innocent tones of the martyr ; the grating of the 
prison doors ; the rattling of musketry ; that last, sweet word 
Avhispered in the ear of her spiritual father, " / am mnocent" 
sounded like the last awakening trumpet of God in his ear. 
Night after night the manacled victim of perjury and arbitrary 
power would alternate the apparition with her heavenly vest- 
ments, as she stood before his bedside, or paced his room, or 
aroused him from his sleep, to hear the piteous cries of the beau- 
tiful Anna, standing by the Presidential mansion, or kneeling 
upon the cold stone, begging the Saviour to intercede with the 
Heavenly Father to move the stony hearts of tyrants to pity, and 
save her mother. Scarcely had the swooning sleep of opiates 
quieted his broken rest, vmtil the murdered woman would stalk 
forth from the unconsecrated grave, and point the sleeper to the 
scars upon her body, the coarse habiliments and unhallowed 
scenes of the execution. The innocent, unprotected, homeless 
daughter would again join her mother in the scene. He awoke, 
arose, dressed himself, sought comfort in society ; fled to the busy 
scenes of ofiice, but there still stood by his side the phantom of 
the martyred woman and her lovely child. The cruel stories of 
provost guards, the distress created by the tax-gatherer, the rev- 
elry of political victories, only intensified his suffering. The 
pronunciation of the names of tliese injured people startled his 
nervous system and shook his frame. 

Tlie apparitions accompanied him to the table, followed him 
on the streets, mingled in the crowds of the ferry-boat ; as one 
pursued by a legion of demons, he fled ; and in his delirium, 
sought a hiding-place on the ocean, only to awake up to meet his 
victim face to face, before the judgment-seat of God. 

Many of these wicked men, pursued by their crimes, sought 
refuge in their own destruction. Others, more guilty, remain 
among us, only to flee to other lands, endure the punisliment 
provided by law, or receive pardon for their crimes at the hands 
of a merciful, injured people. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 159 

Such are the inscrutable judgments of God that follow wick- 
edness. 

THE CIVIL WAR HAS DESTROYED THE DECENCY AND DIGNITY 
OF PUBLIC OFFICERS. 

The simplicity of our fathers was accompanied by a decency 
and dignity of deportment, which awarded to them the admira- 
tion of the governments of the world. 

George Washington had an inherent personal majesty which 
could not be imitated by all the magnificent trappings of imperial 
power. 

Jefferson preserved a grand simplicity that commanded uni- 
versal respect. 

Our Presidents had all been cultivated gentlemen of simple 
manners and exemplary personal habits. 

The Presidential Mansion was distinguished for the propriety, 
purity and excellent taste of its inmates. No such debauchee as 
Henry VIII. ; no such libertine as George IV. ; no such volup- 
tuary as Louis XIV., had filled the Executive chair. No such 
person as Catherine II., or the female courtiers of Southern 
Europe, had friends at the White House. From Martha 
Washington downward to Mrs. Pierce, the wives of the Presi- 
dents were distinguished for their intelligence, taste, and purity 
of character ; the true representatives of the real womanhood 
of America. 

No soldier ever stood guard to a President, or cavalcade was 
quartered upon the quiet grounds of his unpretending home. 
The beautiful bronze statue of Jackson, the citizen, soldier, 
President, was the only indication of military presence at the 
White House. 

Plain, simple, accessible and communicative, our earlier Pres- 
idents walked out upon the street, unattended ; and like other 
quiet gentlemen, were known only by their personal acquaintances 
from the community in which they mingled. 

The levees were open to every citizen who understood the 
proprieties of life and conformed to the usages of society. The 
rich and poor met together ; the military and civilian were the 
common guests, and each were alike protected by law. 



160 CRIMES OF a HE CIVIL WAR. 

Foreign ministers, who came from courts guarded by bayonets, 
were amazed at the ease with which thirty millions of freemen 
were governed without sabres, bayonets, epaulettes, or provost 
marshals' guards. 

The virtue and intelligence of our ladies had captivated foreign 
ministers, who took them to foreign courts to share the honors 
bestowed by sovereign powers. Such was our enviable history 
at the opening of the civil war. 

The advent of President Lincoln to the White House inaugu- 
rated a new era in the social morals of the country. 

The aged President, Buchanan, in the evening of life, retired 
from the White House, which had been kept in a style of elegant 
simplicity by his accomplished niece, Miss Plarriet Lane. 

INIrs. Lincoln, whose well known history is before the public, 
entered the Presidential home as the presiding genius. She was 
soon surrounded by teachers of etiquette, dancing masters, and 
the new style of flippant gentility which took possession of the 
country. 

In presenting a simple statement of the manners, customs, 
visitors, and appointees, the mildest form of justice seems a cru- 
elty scarcely less than torture to the new-comers. 

Soon after the advent of the new occupants, the White House 
was crowded with a new class of visitors, editors, politicians, 
and adventurers. N. P. Willis, conspicuous in scandal trials, 
wrote elaborate essays and sketches of the " rosy queen," the 
" little prince," and such sickening communications as excited sur- 
prise even among the sycophants of power. Sickles was an in- 
mate and adviser of the President, and Wyckoif, the European 
scandal-monger, came to teach lessons of manners to the " rosy 
queen " and " little princes." 

Those persons who had been unknown heretofore in the circle 
of the higher departments of the Government, were now its 
chief directors. A large volume w^ould not contain the list of 
these new-comers into political circles. 

The military appointments were made in jest and were intend- 
ed for jest. 

The foreign ministers were such as never represented any other 
government abroad. A striking illustration of Mr. Lincoln's 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 161 

advisers is given in the two ministers who went to make terms 
of peace with Mr. Jefferson Davis. 

Jacques, a Methodist minister, went to Richmond ; entered 
into an insolent interview with the President of the Confederate 
States ; returned to Louisville ; entered as an accomplice in a 
murder, and killed, with his own unborn child, an unprotected 
woman whom he had previously destroyed. Gilmore returned 
to New England to answer in court for the seduction of his own 
servant. 

These are samples of the appointees in the army, in the courts, 
everywhere. But the government of the White House exceeded 
all powers of description, and from the decency of its manage- 
ment, forbids broad allusions. 

The White House was surrounded by soldiers. " The little 
Princes " could detain regiments. The sovereign of the New 
Nation was surrounded by cavalcades wherever he went, as his 
companions and friends. The history of the indiscretions, inde- 
cencies and follies of each regiment, would require the details of 
a large volume. 

The sovereign ascended the throne with a very common town 
property w^orth nothing like ten thousand dollars. He lived 
four years in the greatest extravagance ; received only one hun- 
dred thousand dollars salary, and left an estate worth an eighth 
of a million. 

Every applicant for office preceded or followed his application 
with a bribe in shape of presents to the President, in the form of 
fine horses and carriages, silver plate, cashmere shawls, Brussels 
carpets, silk wardrobes, and all that was known, to assail the 
avarice of the corrupt, or allure the weakness of the vain. 

Every officer used his office as a source of profit to himself, to 
be divided with the officer immediately above him at the ex- 
pense of the people, the amount of which was never known 
until it was sunk in the general bankruptcy of the public debt, 
and reappeared in the funding system. 

Mr. Lincoln's name was prominent in cotton speculation; in- 
deed, he did not hesitate to engage in giving passes to trade with 
the enemy to friends, including relatives of members of the 
Cabinet. In one case, the father of Gen. Grant claimed a com- 
11 



162 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

mission upon cotton, bought under a pass from his son, which 
even a venal judge felt constrained to denounce in court asshame- 

ful. 

The court of Lincoln to all of its excesses, profligacies and 
corruption, added venality and penuriousness. During his life- 
time, Lincoln made a handsome fortune, to say nothing of those 
unsettled accounts with public officers, which death closed to their 
benefit and the loss of his estate, which his relict is now vainly 
endeavoring to collect. At his death, perhaps, the smallest crime 
committed against decency, was the entire removal of all the 
valuable property of the Presidential mansion by his widow. 
But she is a woman, and we forbear comment. 

In all history, wars are accounted the greatest human calamity 
that the angry God can inflict upon a wicked people. Wars are 
always unjust and unequal in their bearing upon society. The 
late war was especially so. It grew out of a controversy con- 
cerning the government, which the masses of the pco}>le did not 
well understand. They had no opportunity to examine and no 
time to devote to them. 

These controversies involved the pride, ambition and personal 
interest of m:litary and political leaders, who had scarcely any- 
thing in common with the people. 

The whole controversy might have been amicably settled to 
the advantage of everybody 

There was a savage joy glowing in the countenance of every 
fanatic at the outbreak of the war. It is not the purpose of this 
book to examine any mere details of battles, but rather to pre- 
sent the condition of the public mind under the influence of the 
usurpation. 

It was an exceedingly brilliant Sabbath morning when the 
two armies of American brothers met in the sanguinary struggle 
of death, common disgrace and destruction. 

To the Congress, the occasion seemed a holiday ; and the com- 
batants excited in the Congress the same feeling usually aroused 
in the most profligate of spectators, of cock-fighting, bull-bait- 
ing, and the gladiatorial scenes of the Romans. The churches 
opened their morning service by the ringing of bells and the 
playing of organs. Only the women and children were present; 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 163 

the minister, as he passed the streets, met horses, buggies, 
barouches, stages, omnibuses, and carriages of every description, 
loaded down with wines, brandies, whiskey, ales, beer, and every 
variety of drink. Members of Congress, Ministers of States, 
blooming cyprians and professional thieves, strangely commingled, 
went yelling and singing merrily on their way. Wagon loads 
of handcuffs were prepared for the arrest and confinement of the 
enemy's prisoners. Billiard-tables, backgammon boards, decks 
of cards and boxes of dice, were provided for the pastime and 
amusement of tlie army followers. 

Congress had adjourned for the purpose of feasting their eyes 
upon the harrowing, bloody sights of the battle-field, and charm- 
ing their ears with martial music which would drown the cries 
of the terrified, the groans of the dying, and shrieks of the 
wounded. 

Except in the magnificence of numbers, everything upon this 
holy Sabbath reminds one of the great army of Xerxes. Volup- 
tuousness and pride, luxury and licentiousness, extravagance, 
frivolity and crime, ran wild together. The whole city of Wash- 
ington was drunk on liquors, abandoned to lust, and thirsting 
for blood. 

The evening scene can never be described. The return of the 
spectators and soldiers together, Avas the most highly-wrought 
picture of a living mutiny of soldiers, rout of armies, fright of 
teamsters, and frenzy of camp-followers. Wagons were deserted, 
carriages broken, forage overturned in the road, provisions scat- 
tered in the streets, soldiers running away from the officers, and 
officers running away from the army. 

Ministers of religion, like poor Lovejoy and Gurley, running 
for life ; senators fleeing in advance of the soldiers, knocking 
them off of their vehicles, and describing them as " poor brutes, 
and miserable wretches," struggling with each other for means 
to fly in the general escapade. 

IVIembers of Congress fell into the hands of the enemy, and 
were retained as prisoners. Running in confusion, the whole 
vac-rant, panic-stricken mass of distracted rabble reached Wash- 
ino-ton, where, for five years, every vice had unlicensed reign, 
and every indulgence became morbid and abominable. 



164 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

The Congress were passing laws against polygamy, when 
Stevens jocosely, yet truly observed, that some of them had their 
wives in Washington and their mistresses at home; whilst others 
had their mistresses in Washington and their wives at home. 

To conciliate temperance demands, drunken members enacted 
whiskey excises, and grew rich upon the profits. 

Since the fall of Babylon no such corruption, depravity and 
crime ever scandalized any city or country, as the gathered con- 
tractors, spies, pimps, thieves, office-hunters, office-holders, spec- 
ulators, stock-gamblers, peculators and ])rostitutes of Washing- 
ton city. 

The Congress corrupted the army, and the army overawed 
Congress. Military officers used their place as a stepping-stone 
to Congress, and Congress employed their offices to secure con- 
tracts. 

Men charged with bribery, like Cameron, were appointed to 
cabinet places. When the Congress charged liim with corrup- 
tion in the cabinet, the President sent him upon a foreign mis- 
sion. When he returned home, he bonglit his way into the 
Senate. When the legislature was charged with bribery, the 
very body accused of the crime were appointed a committee to 
examine into the charge, and reported themselves innocent. 
Stevens said of Cameron to Lincoln, that " he might be safely 
trusted with a furnace of red hot stoves." 

To this corruption, pervading a whole administration, w^as 
added revelry, feastings, and such riotous living as had never 
been introduced before in the Presidential mansion. 

All of the early Presidents and their families were of high 
social position, but it was the dignity of enlightened gentlemen 
and ladies, seasoned with the solemnity of position. Things 
were now entirely changed. 

Upon one occasion, the favorite child of the President was ly- 
ing in the very jaws of death ; the physician was carefully 
counting the sinking pulsations in his little arm, and dared not 
leave his bedside. The whole land was in mourning; thousands 
of brave men were slowly perishing, others were dying with their 
wounds, or lay slaughtered on the battle-field. The scene of 
desolation in the South was appalling ; the suffering in the North 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 165 

was pifiable. But death presented no obstacle to tliis Presiden- 
tial revelry. As the groans of the wounded soldiers were hushed 
by the thundering cannon and deafening drum, the expiring 
groans of the dying child were drowned in the tones of the Bac- 
chanalian's songs, and the revelry of the small hours of the 
night. 

These effeminate corruptions in the society of the newly es- 
tablished nation, extended in the most alarming violence to the 
extremities of the land. 

Citizens were banished for defending the Constitution. This 
was commenced in Burnside's drunken campaign in the State of 
Ohio, in 1863. 

A defeated, disgraced and impotent general officer of the army 
of the United States, in violation of law, was appointed military 
satrap of Ohio. 

Fresh from the bloody, inglorious and horrible battle-fields of 
Virginia, where all of his former follies, frailties and disasters 
ripened and concentrated in the overwhelming defeat, rout and 
slaughter of brave soldiers, led into the man-trap and deadfall by 
his imbecility, which will forever doom the connection of the 
unfortunate field with his infamous name as the butcher of 
Fredericksburg. This man came clothed with arbitrary power, 
to rule the State and destroy the people. 

He entered upon his duties prompted by the worst advisers 
that ever ruined a reckless man, and amused his Bacchanalian 
associates, surrounded by their harems of cyprians, with dis- 
gusting braggadocia, to frighten the unarmed citizens whose lives 
were at his mercy. 

"Within speaking distance of where I now write, he assembled 
a military commission to destroy one of the ablest and most re- 
nowned citizens of Ohio, and by this persecution indissolubly 
connected his name with civil liberty, and endeared it to man- 
kind. 

This military commission was conducted by one DeCourcy, an 
unnaturalized British mercenary. The Judge Advocate, Cutts, 
of this insolent usurpation, was subsequently convicted by court- 
martial for playing bopeep through a lady's transom, but was 
retained with his rank as quite a proper person for the espionage 



166 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

branch of the public service. The history is before you, and 
forbids amplification. These men, led by the tool Burnside, 
committed a crime against liberty which invoked the just resist- 
ance of the people. 

A corrupt and cringing Governor, who had bartered his prin- 
ciples for position, abandoned the rights of the people and ab- 
jured the sovereignty of the State for the patronage of the 
general Government, exchanged the proud position of Governor 
of a free State for the cringing tool of the central tyrant. 

After banishment, then came arbitrary arrests everywhere. 

The lash was employed upon enlisted soldiers without trial. 
One case occurred in the city of Pittsburg, with aggravated cruelty; 
they afterwards became common. The torture was revived to 
extort confessions. All the abandoned cruelties of the medieval 
ages, were instituted as wonderful discoveries and progress. But 
in no place Avas the cruelty and recklessness of human life so 
manifest as in the treatment of prisoners, which was the most 
horrible feature of the war. 

The process was atrocious, cruel infernality in its detail, that 
startles the belief of a Christian age. 

The first step was to destroy the country — and women and 
children were driven to destitution, which led to a second crime 
against decency, humanity and nature itself; droves of Avomen 
were sent hundreds of miles from home, under the pretext that 
there Avas nothing left for them to subsist upon in their own 
country. Desolation and ruin befel these unprotected strangers 
in an enemies' land. 

The desolation of the land also stinted the rations of the sol- 
diers, until their destitution was extreme. 

There was such a great scarcity of food in the Confederate 
States for the people, that the soldiers were unable to feed or 
care for the prisoners who fell into their hands ; so that healthy 
prison-life became impossible. 

Second. Medicines were indiscriminately destroyed Avith burn- 
ing cities, villages and stores; and remedies Avere not permitted 
to be borne to the sick and suffering. Drug stores Avere given 
to the flames, and many were executed as spies for carrying medi- 
cines upon their persons, to save the lives of their sick families. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1G7 

A lady going South, Avas stripped and examined by tlic wives 
of two Senators, Avho took from lier a few grains of quinine 
wliich slie liad saved for her dying ehikl, although one of these 
women had only lately buried her own child. The good sense 
of the commander restored the medicine to the lady. 

Third. The government of the United States refused to ex- 
change prisoners, and offered as apology, that it could not aiibrd 
to exchange men in health for sick men. 

In many eases, the treatment of prisoners was atrocious. In 
Camp Douglas the prisoners froze their feet ; were guarded and 
shot at by Indians; shot at l)y the guards; punished with a 
coarse, shocking cruelty for trivial offences. In other cases, the 
prisoners bought themselves out with money; were reported 
dead, and their burial expenses paid. And it Avere difficult to 
determine whether avarice or malice Avere the ruling spirit of the 
prison. 

In Camp Chase, the privation, suffering and torture were ex- 
treme ; at Fort Delaware, Johnson's Island and Rock Island, 
the cruelty was of the Esquimaux type. In all of these prisons, 
the stinting and sickening mixtures of food was even more de- 
structive of life than the battle-field. 

The Federal reports show that a lai-ger proportion of Confed- 
erate prisoners died in Federal prisons than of Federals in rebel 
prisons. 

Contemplating the crimes, cruelties and sufferings, in the 
United States, in the nineteenth century, under a Christian dis- 
pensation, perpetrated by Christians, the soul sinks in agony 
at the sad and gloomy spectacle. 

The tortures were gross and fiendish. "When Dr. William A. 
Eowles, an old soldier of the Mexican war, and Mr. Milligan, 
an eminent lawyer of Indiana, were, by a mock military court, 
condemned, it was arranged to take these aged gentlemen out 
upon the scaffold, put the ropes around their necks, and offer 
public taunts and gibes, and then i-eturn them to the State's Prison, 
During the confinement in the Ohio penitentiary, Mr. Milligan, 
who was not a physician, was forced to extract teeth, and in one 
case, fractured a jaw-bone in the attempt. Is it possible that the 
people of Ohio know the outrages practiced upon these gentle- 



168 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

men ? who, in family, breeding, intelligence and general charac- 
ter, were greatly the superior of any of the State officers who super- 
vised their incarceration. Dr. Olds was denied the Bible and 
robbed of his medicines in prison, by the keeper. 

In passing Mr. Vallandigham through the lines, an attempt 
was made by an officer to excite the soldiers to violence; failing 
in the attempt, the officer boasted that he had saved the life of 
Mr. Vallandigham. This officer has been a minister, a colonel 
and member of Congress, and out of very shame, his vanity 
shall not be gratified by giving his name in this book. 

Such was the reigning crime and cruelty in the New Nation. 

Families were turned out-doors to provide for the traveling 
harlots of military officers. The property of everybody was 
appropriated at will by these guardians of the new nation, who 
came to " "protect " the people. 

The evil day came and the years drew nigh, Avhen the tyrant 
found no pleasure in them. 

Good Friday was the sad day of the crucifixion of the blessed 
Son of Mary ; on that day the heavens wore their black and 
gloomy garments; the sun refused to shine; the veil of the 
Temple was rent. 

The God-like head of Jesus was crowned with thorns. The 
purest of all that was born of a woman. He was condemned to 
die between two thieves. The kindest of all that wore the hu- 
man form. He died of the most excruciating torture ; the love- 
liest of all who lived. He was followed with the most malig- 
nant hate. They smote Him, spit upon Him, buffetted Him, 
drove nails in His hands and feet, thrust a sj^ear into His body. 

He in whose tongue there was no guile, was taunted, reviled, 
insulted. 

He who was the exhaustless fountain of life, died that we might 
live. 

Such Avere the themes and associations of this blessed day. 

To the Christian it M-as a day of lasting, of solemn recollection 
of the pangs of the crucifixion. 

For more than eighteen centuries had this holy day been held 
in solemn reverence. As far as the compass had directed the 
vessel that ploughed the main to distant lands, had this day been 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 169 

kept sacred on the ocean. And wide as the circuit of the sun 
had Christians honored the custom, and abased themselves 
before heaven in vindication of their sorrow and tlieir shame for 
the crimes of a guilty world. 

Tolling bells and mournful chants, robes of black and dar- 
kened windows, were signals of the deep feelings of distress 
which each returning anniversary brought back to the Christian 
mind. 

But America was already in mourning. Every household 
had yielded its first-born to the battle-field. Lincohi had filled 
a new graveyard in every neighborhood, whose white monuments 
were reared to commemorate his bloody reign. 

Wives whose husbands had been slain on distant fields of 
carnage, died in prison, or had been shot down like brutes, were 
hnddling their little ones around their meagre fires, or wasting 
their feeble strength in gathering food, or weeping over the ab- 
sent father. 

Children, penniless and lonely, were going to and fro in search 
of shelter. 

Old people whose darling sons, the last remaining hope of life, 
had been hurried to the grave, sat disconsolate in their ruined 
homes. 

Hundreds of thousands homeless, turned away from the ashes 
of their dwellings, were mourning in the land ; half a continent 
was in ruins ; trade destroyed ; commerce broken up ; private 
intercourse interrupted in every community. 

At every cross-road and corner of the street, armless sleeves 
were falling by the side of stalwart frames; young men hobbling 
on crutches; hospitals filled with the sick, whose pitiful eyes 
were staring into the grave ; and ambulances loaded down with 
the wounded, v/hose dying shrieks rent the air. 

The pitiless hand of an angry God left nothing undone which 
could afflict the people. Our cup of sorrow Avas full. 

Good Friday was opportune ibr our worship, our sufferings, 
and our sorrow. 

Scarcely had the light of the sun closed in upon the evening, 
until the White House was filled with its usual revelry, and the 
President and family, passing chapels, churches and cathedrals, 



170 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

entered the fashionable resort of a licentious city. His box was 
opened and closed. The house was filled to its utmost capacity. 
A low, coarse pla}', " Oar American Cousin," was to be re- 
peated, to pander to the tastes of the imperial visitors. Shak- 
speare, Addison, Sheridan or Ben Johnson, were too stale for 
the royalty of the New Nation. 

This was a gala day, and the theatre was chosen as a fitting 
place to obliviate all the recollections of Calvary, ail of the 
sufferings of the poor, the woes of the victims of carnage and 
incendiary desolation. The cries of the suffering were lost in 
the glee of merriment. 

Kever befoi'e was crowd so jubilant. There were newly made 
officers, promoted from gambling hells and lower sinks of vice ; 
contractors grown rich of robbeiy ; fashionable Avoraen who had 
emerged from low estate, and brought tverything with them to 
their new positions, but their virtue. Never Avas dress so gay, or 
apparel so brilliant. All of the silks, jewelry and diamonds, 
economized by the labor of centuries in the South, had been 
pillaged of the people and distributed in the armies ; but the 
army was in the theatres, — bracelets, rings, chains, keys, watches, 
silks, cashmeres, robes, — everything seemed studded with dia- 
monds, burning with lustre. 

But when the dazzling light shone down in effulgence from the 
mammoth chandeliers, the scene was thrilling. 

Down low in the pit were the torch-men, fresh from the 
field of plunder in Georgia, who had walked for months upon the 
ashes of burning plantations. The teamsters had wantonly 
shot down herds of all the domestic animals, to starve the people. 
These were the officers who led them, inflauied with lust and 
drunken on blood. Around them were the abandoned women 
who shared their plunder, arrayed in the costume of ladies Avliose 
stolen 'garments they Avore. Thieves and pickpoclcets, stock 
gamblers and ]ioker-players, in one motley gang, Avere all doing 
homage to the usurper of the New Nation. 

The players Avere preparing to feed the ear with brilliant levity, 
as the eye Avas feasted Avith the scenes arouml. 

Just at this moment ste[)ped upon the stage a lithe, strong, 
beautiful form. His broad, pale iorehead stood out iioai a rich 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 171 

crest of coal black hair that fell in luxuriance around his neck. 
This personage was mysterious and historic. He bore the name 
of a proud Englislmian, in whose person English liberty had 
been outraged and vindicated. His father wore the name of 
that great Roman tyrant's slayer, Brutus. He had been 
a dramatist by profession and inheritance, who learned his plays 
and felt them as he spoke them. With him the drama was 
a thing of life and thus he acted ; it was life itself which 
seemed the jest. He loved his father, and he believed the doc- 
trines of his plays. He looked around him and saw a nation 
sunken in slavery; the poor butchered, the rich revelling; the 
brave crushed out, sycophants exalted ; flatterers growing rich ; 
thieves rioting in wealth ; brave, honest men pining in prison, 
or seeking shelter under the shadow of foreign thrones ; and no 
man dared raise his voice against these crimes. With his single 
accomplice, Powell, without suggestion, he conceived the tragedy 
and turned toward the mock royal box. His eyes, like bursting 
balls of fire, fell full upon the object of his rage; he fired his 
pistol, his victim fell lifeless, and spoke no word to be remem- 
bered. Booth leaped upon the stage, crying "sic semper ty- 
rannis." 

Lincoln has been compared to Washington; herein they 
diifered. 

AYashington m'US modest, reticent, dignified ; Lincoln was 
familiar, garrulous and clownish. 

Washington was wise, sincere and determined. 

Lincoln was cunning, treacherous and fickle. 

Washington refused presents, pay for his services, and emolu- 
ments for his sacrifices. 

Lincoln kept each member of his family as beggars for pres- 
ents, silent partners in contracts, and grew wealthy from the 
spoils of office. 

Washington established constitutional liberty among men, 
upon the sure foundations of law. 

Lincoln tore up that very Constitution, and set up his arbitrary 
will instead. 

Washington was religiously careful in the selection of the 
ablest, purest men of the country to administer the government; 



172 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

choosing those who differed with hiin in opinion, for the good of 
the country. 

Lincohi selected the weakest, worst and most corrupt men of 
the country, because they agreed with him in opinion, and served 
him cheerfully as instruments of usurpation. 

Washington moulded chaos into order, stability and legitimate 
government. 

Lincoln dissolved the government, and left the country^in an- 
archy. 

Washington received the spontaneous devotion of his country- 
men through the press which he had made free, and the people 
who were secure in their liberty. 

Lincoln enforced the most extravagant adulation from his own 
hired presses, his officers who were plundering the country, and 
the pulpit bribed to chant his praises. 

Washington went to every part of the land, unattended by 
military array, except those crowds of old volunteers of liberty, 
who came to pay their respect to his person, and congratulate the 
country upon the success of constitutional government. Women, 
with woven garlands, met him wherever he went. Beautiful 
maidens and sweet little children, strewed his walks with flow- 
ers. 

From the day of the inauguration to the hour of his tragical 
death, Lincoln was never out of the reach of the sound of artil- 
lery ; was surrounded by soldiers to guard his person ; flatterers 
and courtiers to corrupt his heart ; and female sycophants beg- 
ging favors, dispensing praises, and making merry in his court. 

After his term of office, Washington retired to his farm, to 
open the hospitable door of his mansion to his old confreres in 
arms, and entertain visitors who sought his company to learn 
more of manly liberty. In the strength of his mind and the 
vigor of a green old age, surrounded by friends Avho loved him, 
he surrendered his soul to God, to be mourned by his country- 
men and honored by mankind. Lincoln closed his life as stated 
above. 

There was a singular resemblance between Claudius Nero, 
and Abraham Lincoln, 

In early life, Nero was remarkable for his jovial habit of illus- 
tration. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 173 

Lincoln's whole field of logic, illustration, ridicule and satire, 
Avas anecdote and stories. 

Nero proposed many reforms under Seneca and Burrhus, and 
grew in popularity among the people, until lie was accounted a 
god. 

Lincoln commenced his administration as a benevolent re- 
former, under the auspices of all the reformers of the country. 

Nero's subjects rebelled against his usurpation. Lincoln's sub- 
jects anticipated his usurpation. Such rulers always create re- 
bellions and excite resistance. 

Nero played the drama of the destruction of Troy, during the 
seven days' burning of Rome. 

Lincoln attended balls and engaged in festivities during the 
five years' conflagration of the country, and the wanton, bloody 
slaughter of his countrymen ; and had vile songs sung among 
his dying armies. 

Nero rebuilt Rome at his own expense, by extortion and rob- 
bery, and the tyrant was liberal to the sufferers. In this Nero 
excelled Lincoln, who repaired no damages of burning cities. 

Nero threw prisoners to wild beasts ; Lincoln kept prisoners 
confined in cold prisons, where their limbs were frozen ; in filthy 
prisons where they were eaten up with vermin ; starved them 
until they died of scurvy and other loathesome diseases, after 
months of terror, torture and cruelty. 

Nero put Christians to death under false pretence, to gratify 
the worshippers of the Pantheon. 

Lincoln corrupted one part of the Church to engage in war- 
fare with the other part, and burned twelve hundred houses of 
worship; mutilated grave-yards; and left whole cities, churches 
and all in ashes ; dragged ministers from their knees in the very 
act of worship ; tied them up by their thumbs ; had their 
daughters stripped naked by negro soldiers, under the command 
of white officers. 

Suetonius, under Nero, butchered eighty thousand Britons, 
defended by Queen Boadicea. His officers flogged Boadicea and 
ravished her daughters ; and lost thousands of Romans in the 
attempt to subdue the Britons, who were defending their homes, 
altars and grave-yards. 



174 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Lincoln let loose Turcliin to ravish the women of Athens, 
Alabama; Banks and Butler to rob New Orleans; Sheridan to 
burn up Virginia; Sherinan to ravage the South with desolating 
fires; Payne and Burbridge to murder in Kentucky; Neil, 
Strachan and the vagabond thieves, to murder, rob and destroy 
Missouri, until one million of his murdered countrymen butch- 
ered each other by his command. Every department of Nero's 
government was signalized by licentiousness and debauchery, 
nameless and loathesome. 

Lincoln's court was the resort of debauchees ; the Treasury 
Department was a harem ; the public officers were one great un- 
restrained multitude who yielded to the coarsest appetites of 
nature, stimulated by strong drinks and inflamed by the indul- 
gence of every other vice. 

In this did Nero, to his credit, differ from Lincoln. The 
generals of Nero respected the works of arts, the paintings, 
poems and manuscripts of the learned, and the discoveries of 
genius. 

Upon the other hand, Lincoln destroyed everything that indi- 
cated superior civilization. In one instance, a general officer of 
scientific pretension, arrayed his daughter in the stolen garments 
of the wife of C. C. Clay, an old Senator of Alabama. During 
the invasion of Huntsville, Mr. Clay's house was robbed of its 
jewelry, the heir-looms of tln-ee generations, taken against the 
tearful prayers of his black servant. The exquisitely beautiful 
statue of his dead babe, was ground to powder before his eyes. An 
appeal to Lincoln's men, that any object was of scientific value, 
only hastened its destruction ; his wars were directed against 
civilization. 

Nero fled before the judgment of the Senate, and died by his 
own hand. Lincoln could not have survived his crimes, so un- 
relenting is the retributive justice of God. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 175 



CHAPTER XYII. 

Infidelity of the Clergy. 

The supremacy of God is the cardinal doctri^sE op 
moderx civilization. 

God is just, wise, good, merciful, kind, intelligent, reasonable 
and supreme. 

In our consideration of the supremacy of God, vre must clear- 
ly distinguish between Avhat is human and what is divine. 

Truth is of God; sectairesare of men purely ; worship is due 
to God; but its manner is entirely human. The gospel is of 
Christ and consistent Avith itself. Churches are of men, and in 
most unhappy conflict with each other. The great universe is the 
temple of the omnipotent, omnipresent, ever-living God ; it is that 
great Church in wdiicli Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant 
may look up through nature to her great architect, and live and 
learn forever more. Presbyteries, conferences, associations, con- 
ventions and synods, are the local and sectarized assemblies in 
which mere men circumscribe that broad, deep, high and holy 
worship of the living God, which was, in the beginning, wide 
as illimitable space and pure as innocence. Religion is the sun's 
brightest shadow of the Deity imprinted upon the soul, which, 
when duly stamped, will, with glowing beauty, shine 'mid the 
wreck of matter and the crush of Avorlds ; and when the ele- 
ments melt with fervent heat and the fading light of the solar 
system has grown dim with age, " will shine as the brightness of 
the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the 
stars forever and forever." 

A land without God is, in that hopeless orphanage, infinitely 
more deplorable than a family bereft of its fiither. A jicople 
without a church, has invited the departure of God from their 
midst. A church, Avithout piety profanes God, by associating his 
infinite perfection Avith the Avickedness of men. 



176 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

The great commandments of God are these: 1. To love God 
with all thy mind and all thy soul, and all thy heart and all thy 
strength. 2. To love thy neighbor as thyself. To love God 
is to love his attributes; for no man hath seen God at any time. 
To love God is to love justice, to love mercy, to love truth, to 
love holiness and integrity, to love God is more; it is to do jus- 
tice, love mercy, and walk humbly before Him. 

" Pure religion and undefilcd before God and the Father is 
this : To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, 
and keep himself unspotted from the world." " By this shall 
all men know that ye are my disciples ; that ye love one an- 
other." "God so loved the world that he gave his only begot- 
ten Son, that whosoever believed in him, might not perish, but 
have everlasting life." 

To love God is to love peace ; for He is " the God of peace." 

The entrance of Jesus into the world was heralded by mes- 
sengers crying, " Peace on earth, good Avill to man, glory to God 
in the highest." " Blessed are the peace-makers." 

These were the unchanging axioms of Christianity, in vindi- 
cation of which, the Son of Mary oftered up his life in sacrifice 
for man. 

The office of the Christian ministry is the highest vocation of 
life : the church the most sacred rejiository of the truth upon 
earth. These are the earthen vessels to which God has commit- 
ted the great treasures of life : the guardians of the gospel, the 
trustees of our immortality. 

The ministers of the New Testament baptizes the children, 
marry the mature, and bury the dead. A faithful priesthood 
have limitless power over a devoted people, to preserve them 
from evil, or direct them to good. In the United States, the 
clergy were supported by the voluntary contributions of the peo- 
ple, and had the utmost social power over them. They taught the 
schools, assumed control over all of the charitable institutions of 
the country. 

Before the outbreak of the late civil war, it was within the 

EASY POWER OF THE CLERGY TO HAVE PREVENTED IT. 

AVhat a magnificent spectacle would it have jiresented to the 
wicked world, for the united clergy of America, to wrest the 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 177 

sword from the hands of the frenzied people. Suppose every 
minister had visited each member of his flock, and prayed with 
every family in his church for peace. Each conference, presby- 
tery, synod and convention, had taught it as the duty of the 
churches to preserve the priceless treasure of peace. 

Each sermon on the holy Sabbath, had carefully abstained 
from the subjects that irritated the public mind and cultivated 
the social peace of every community. Each denomination join- 
ed with the others to cultivate the spirit of kindness, the love of 
God and the love of men, brotherly love and personal kindness 
— and the whole joined as the sacramental Host of God. All 
of the wicked, designing, corrupt and malicious men of America 
would have failed to provoke war or disturb the quiet waters of 
peace. Suppose, upon a given day, the whole American church 
had joined in simultaneous prayers to God, to preserve peace, to 
restore quiet, and let a free and enlightened people settle the dif- 
ferences of opinion without a conflict of arms. War never could 
have stained the pure escutcheon of American glory ; or one- 
half of the land engage in butchering their neighbors of the 
other half. What stinging reproach must stir the souls of the 
American ministry, who let the happy moments pass in which 
they could have saved widowhood of its pangs, orphanage of its 
destitution, war of its carnage, plunder of its treasure, fires of 
their fuel, and crime of its victims ; but they did not. 

But if the clergy had quietly left the affair of the world to 
the care of the world, and stood silently by, there would have 
been no war ; but this they did not do. 

The clergy of the country inflamed the public passion until war 
was inevitable. Mr. Beecher of Brooklyn, gave his church to 
collect money to buy firearms, long before war was believed in- 
evitable or tl^ought possible. 

The same crime was repeated in every part of the country ; 
and the violence, acrimony and passion of the pulpit, would have 
created war in any country. 

In violation of the law of God, the churches went to law with 
each other about questions purely ecclesiastical, that Christians 
should have settled among themselves. 
12 



178 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

The church papers indulged in all of the usual bitterness, 
slander and slang of the wicked world. 

The churches Avere divided, one after another, until the last ves- 
tige of good feeling seemed to be determined by arbitrary lines. 

When war commenced, the ministers were recruiting sergeants, 
and their churches turned into military posts. The old fashion- 
ed " mourners' bench," " anxious seat " and class-meeting room, 
was converted into recruiting stalls. 

The old Mahommedanism was revived, that whoever left the 
world for the battle-field, was saved without the atoning blood 
of the crucifixion ; and thousands, who had learned the reli- 
gion of self-denial, restitution and reformation, repentance, faith 
and perfect love, sought immortality through the carnage, suffer- 
ing and courag-e of the battle-field, where the resurrection would 
know no distinction, except between loyalty and rebellion; or 
recognize any who had not valiantly laid down their lives in the 
cause of the " New Nation." Every innovation l)y the army, 
the Executive or Congress, was adopted as a new canon of reli- 
gion, or a new article of religious faith. 

There seemed nothing too atrocious for them to press as a 
weight upon the Christian church. 

They would adopt one horrible doctrine after another, as a 
part of the Christian faith. When Lincoln committed a crime, 
the churches adopted it as a virtue. There was not a crime com- 
mitted, or a doctrine taught in the reign of Elizabeth, the Stuarts, 
or Henry VIII., that has not, in some form or other, been re- 
adopted in ecclesiastical platforms. In many parts of the coun- 
try, the church took the lead of the most extravagant dema- 
gogues in questions in no wise relevant to church afflurs. 

It is not an unsafe calculation that seven-eights of the minis- 
try of the country, were infidels in faith. 

The scenes of the conferences were more violent,* virulent and 
unscrupulous, than the ordinary political convention. Some of 
the ministers preached sermons in favor of the theatre, because 
Lincoln had met his death in that place of amusement. 

The Presbyterian General Assembly, which met in St. Louis, 
was the most violent deliberative body that ever met in the coun- 
try in its most violent times. When the conference met in the 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 179 

city of Springfield, during the last year of the M'ar, Governor 
Yates entered the conference room, whereupon that body sus- 
pended their proceedings to hear a speech from his excellency. 
The Governor indulged in the most exuberant style of profanity, 
which elicited the wildest applause, and was succeeded by scan- 
dals against the people, which would not have been tolerated in 
any well-regulated drinking house. The Governor had just re- 
turned from one of his strolls in the army, with a lieutenant's 
wife, to whom he had granted the commission of major; which 
called forth a scandalous correspondence between this woman and 
a Senator's wife, of a character not to be entertained in this work. 

When the war commenced, a new and inviting field was open- 
ed for the ministry : to each regiment was appointed a chaplain, 
and each chaplain received a salary equal to a captain of cavalry. 
This brought the whole ambitious clergy into the field. The 
politicians used the clergy to raise a company, as the price of 
their chaplain's commission. And in this way the minister, after 
preaching a malignant sermon to inflame his congregation, would 
spend the week among the poor people of his flock, gathering 
up the hale, stalwart men, and bearing them to the nearest re- 
cruiting station, to be culled, examined, accepted, or rejected, 
after the manner of receiving horses from contractors. In this 
way, many ministers sold out all of the young men of their con- 
gregation to the provost marshal. 

The minister exhibited the greatest anxiety for success ; very 
much of the same kind and style that candidates for lieutenant 
and constable betray in their contests for place. 

Each neighborhood was scoured by the preacher. He prom- 
ised to each recruit an office, sometimes the same office to half a 
dozen persons, and each minister had made the same number of 
promises to as many different recruits. 

This created dissatisfaction, distrust, and sometimes actual con- 
flict between the soldiers. 

But the contest between the ministers for the chaplain's place, was 
intense, bitter, and disgusting. Denomination, interest, favor, in- 
fluence and politics, were urged, and not unfrequently the appoint- 
ing power would vascillate, and crimination and recrimination fol- 
low the venal attempt to sell out the business and profit of the office. 



180 CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 

Having obtained the place in this questionable manner, the office 
became a disgrace to the army, and only a few good and faithful 
men shared the toils of the common soldiers, and lived faithful 
lives. Those failing to get chaplains' commissions in the army, 
sought chaplains' positions in hospitals: others took up the 
sword and sought military office. These ministers carried all of 
the zeal of the pulpit into the neighborhood broils ; and were 
prominent in mobs, riots and arbitrary arrests. You might see 
them strutting into the house of God, with epaulettes on their 
shoulders ; sitting in the streets retailing obscene stories, a la 
Lincoln, to the young recruits. 

These military ministers went to the army and inflamed the 
new levies, so that the old army officers were unable to restrain 
them ; and for hundreds of miles the army would travel night 
after night, by the lurid light of burning plantations. The di- 
vine bully would superintend a street fight, or turn holy brigand 
and drive some poor affrighted woman from her home. Such 
was their general deportment in the field. How blasphemous 
and absurd to hear of a military minister of the Gospel. 

St. Paul on a raid, John the Evangelist on a scout. Colonel 
John Wesley, Major John Calvin, Martin Luther quartermas- 
ter, John Bunyan wagon-master. Yet such were the abominable 
absurdities practiced upon the people by these hypocritical pre- 
tenders and baptized infidels. 

The preachers attended conventions and secured nominations. 
They used the pulpit to get nominations in the army, and used 
the army to get places in the civil government, and used their 
places in the civil government to rob the government. 

In the blood market you would see these representatives of 
Moses and the prophets, Christ and the apostles, engage as flesh- 
dealers, speculating upon the body and blood of their neighbors' 
children, or selling the immortal souls of adults whom they had 
baptized as children. 

At other times they were taking advantage of personal friend- 
ships to persuade away the first-born child of widows' families. 
After eating a hearty dinner, would speculate upon the child that 
grew the corn that fed them, and make money off the broken 
heart that bade them welcome to her cottage. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 181 

Grave Bishops were sending telegraphic congratulations to a 
corrupt Congress for establishing arbitrary power in the country. 
Other Bishops were traveling to Europe to hunt up mercenary 
tools of tyrants to join in the general butchery of their country- 
men. Still others, who were using military force to drive the 
poor people from the churclics which had escaped the vandal 
flame, and trying to steal what they could not burn. 

It would be difficult to conceive a picture of Paul following 
the army of Suetonius into Britain, to steal the groves from tlie 
Druids. But these ministers were brethren of the same church, 
of the same faith, of the same baptism. 

What a fearful crime has this beeu against religion. 

What can these men say to honest heathen, who reproach the 
Gospel for their crimes who teach religion ? 

These men have done lasting harm to God's poor. Thousands 
there are in poverty, distress, and who are homeless, who find 
food, raiment and shelter in their undying trust in Christ and 
the Gospel. 

How infinitely Avicked those, who at one fell swoop, have wiped 
away the world's last hope by their infidelity and crime ! 

The Gospel of Christ is to the poor a pillar of fire in the 
wilderness of time ; a " sunbeam in the storm of death," and 
reveals a beacon on the distant shores of that bourne whence no 
traveler returns. 

How will these ministers approach the savages of the frontier 
with the Gospel of Christ, where the military minister, Chiv- 
inffton, butchered in cold blood, two hundred women and child- 
ren in their winter lodges? With what fiendish audacity must 
that people go, who call that man brother, and offer the Gospel 
to the Indian. 

In that ancient uncorrupted faith of our fathers, who wor- 
shipped in groves ; in that simplicity of the Gospel taught us by 
the simple-minded children of true religion ; in the consolations 
of religion which are offered alike to the rich and the poor, the 
learned and unlearned ; in the immutable love of God, we may 
look for consolation and comfort, and from these bloody-minded 
priests, these mercenary ministers, these sinister hypocrites, these 



182 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAH. 

unbelieving pretenders, let us turn away, to " behold the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sin of the world." 

To the other ministerial debasement was added the crowning 
act of religious prostitution by another Bishop, who followed the 
corpse of the dead tyrant through the land, to teach young men 
how bloody tyrants could ascend through theatres and crimes to 
the kingdom of heaven. 

What a spectacle Avould that have been to see Paul bearing 
around the body of dead Kero — sounding the praises of his 
butcheries, commending his debaucheries, magnifying his mercy, 
and paying homage to his love of God. 

What must have been the transition, were it true, that Lincoln 
ascended on high. 

Passing from the theatre to the throne of God ; from the so- 
ciety of the voluptuous multitude of criminals to the court of 
heaven ; from the crowd of thieves and cyprians to the white- 
vested elders and the saints of light. 

Such was the blasphemy, burlesque and abomination over the 
body of Lincoln, carried over the land to excite the violence of 
the weak and wicked, followed by a frenzied people. 

Such has been the conduct and infidelity of the American 
clergy to the sacred trusts of Christianity. 

The worst of all the infidels who took possession of the church 
was the round-head of Cromwell. The great criminal of Christian 
civilization — the Puritan — is still the same unchanged and un- 
changeable, zealous, treacherous fiend that he Avas before he set 
foot upon the continent of America. Not a whit different in 
purpose, spirit and character, than wdien he stood grinning with 
infernal joy by the stake, throwing burning faggots and hot 
embers upon the naked body of Michael Servetus while he was 
writhing under the excruciating tortures of a slow fire fed by 
green hickory wood, in the public squares of Geneva. 

The Puritan is precisely the same amiable character that he 
was, when he hung Quakers, burned witches, and drowned An- 
abaptists ; Avhen he made merchandize of American institutions, 
and held out blue lights to British ships, and smuggled British 
goods through the blockade in the interest of King George, in 
his second attempt to enslave the American colonies. 



• CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 183 

Nor lias lie changed his nature or abandoned his character ; 
since he grow rich and made his merchants opulent in the African 
slave trade. 

His varied aggressions upon the rights of his neighbors change 
only Avith his means and facilities, and the only hope which he 
offers to the world of improvement, is in the introduction of a 
system of self-destruction, which he has made commensurate 
with his people, and promises an early extermination of his race. 

The Puritan who has propogated his errors and begotten new 
forms of religious crimes, is still encroaching upon our civil 
rights. 

To prevent the union of Church and State, with the intoler- 
ance of the one and the corruption of the other, to restore the 
primitive simplicity of the Church, and the national rights to 
the people, the divorce of Church and State must be complete. 

In the spirit of the fear of God, the love of man and the 
truth of history, do we warn our countrymen against these crimes 
and dangers that environ us. 



184 CKIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



BOOiC SECOnSTHDJ 



CHAPTER I. 

The Conspiracy of the Treasury Department. 

The Treasury Department has always held the first place in 
the governments of the world; and is justly accounted equal to 
the genius, cultivation and endurance of the ablest minds. 

The names of Colbert, Furgott, Necker, John Law, and Wil- 
liam Pitt, Morris Hamilton and Biddle, with the various sys- 
tems of finance, which they represent, are so interwoven in the 
history of Europe and America, that their success and failures, 
with their causes and consequences, is a science complete in it- 
self. 

In the institution of written government in the United States, 
the power and resources of the country to carry on a successful 
financial system, was not the least hazardous part of the great 
experiment. 

The failure in the Treasury Department would have been the 
signal of anarchy in every branch of trade and industry. 

Agriculture, commerce and manufactures, were alike depend- 
ant upon a just, thorough and stable system of weights, measures, 
and moneys which would serve all of the purposes of exchange 
among themselves, and extend their business to the different na- 
tions of the earth. 

Our fathers were duly warned of the dangers which threaten- 
ed our unique system. 

The long catalogue of monetary crimes ; the maintenance of 
aristocracies; the slavery of labor to capital in every govern- 
ment of Europe, were before them. 

Tlie Revolutionary struggle, which brought our infant gov- 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 185 

ernmcnt to the light of tlie world, witnessed a bankruptcy only 
less deplorable than colonial dependency ; and forced a confes- 
sion of inability to pay the soldier who had bought its liberty 
with his blood; and indefinitely deferred the support of the 
widows and orphans of the brave men who slept on the battle- 
field; and the remnant, maimed and wounded, who survived 
the conflict. 

AVith this embarrassing introduction into the family of gov- 
ernments, the American people were singularly circumspect in 
their choice of the great men who were ajipointed guardians of 
the public wealth. 

The office of Secretary of the Treasury, has contributed to the 
literature of the country, historical names, embracing its first 
characters, that would have adorned the biographical annals of 
any country ; whose preliminary education had qualified them 
for the station to which they added lustre. 

The office involved onerous responsibility ; required compre- 
hensive grasp of intellect, and taxed to its utmost capacity the 
richest genius. 

It has been prudently offered and reluctantly accepted, by the 
most distinguished Americans — among whom were Hamilton, 
a jurist, a general and statesman, who had cultivated the gener- 
ous fertility of his native powers to their highest susceptibilities 
of improvement ; whose honored name comes down from an- 
other century, with its burning glory undimmed. Samuel Dex- 
ter, a distinguished son of Massachusetts, when she indulged in 
a just pride of her statesman ; Albert Gallatin, the friend of 
Lafayette, profoundly versed in the varied theories of govern- 
ment ; Richard Rush, Louis McLane, and Wm. H. Crawford ; 
Roger B. Taney, the contemporary and peer of Wirt, Pinkney, 
Martin, "Webster, and Legare. He was the very first of all the 
American jurists, whose name will pass down the current of time 
with the history of our jurisprudence, as its purest and most distin- 
guished ornament. A proud and glorious hero, who, in tlie mid- 
night of the nineteenth century, when surrounded by bayonets, 
deafened by cannon ; amid the sound of drums and the shouts of the 
rabble; when the judiciary of the country were imprisoned, and 
their sacred ermine trampled under the filthy feet of tyrants ; 



186 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

when the blood of murder bedaubed the temple of justice, and 
violence held holiday in legislative halls ; opposed by President 
and Congress ; standing alone ; all that was left of the glory and 
grandeur of the age of liberty ; his eye not dimmed ; his natu- 
ral force unabated ; he denounced the usurpations which were 
sweeping away the last vestiges of constitutional government, 
and registered the mandates of his court as his only legacy to a 
country which tamely surrendered to the behests of power. The 
court, too feeble to enforce its edicts, gave way to brute force. In 
quiet imitation of his court, his enfeebled body surrendered to 
time and his great spirit returned to the bosom of his Creator, 
who gave its lustrous fires. 

There were also Levi Woodbury, Thomas Ewing, Thomas 
Corwin and Walter Forward^ who occuj)ied this distinguished 
position. 

No defalcation or discrepancy in settlements, had scandalized 
the Treasury Department until Salmon P. Chase, as Secretary, 
purchased his way into the favor of the rich, and made himself 
a power equal to any European monarch ; which he employed 
with far less regard to the rights of the peojDle, and left his sin- 
ister face engraved upon an irredeemable paper currency, which 
the latest generations of the people will detest as the insignia of 
our bondage and shame ; who now defiles the pure ermine laid 
down by Taney, and divides his time in the various vocations of 
inciting negro riots ; travelling in oriental style, at the govern- 
ment expense, in ships fitted up for the purpose, and delaying 
decisions which involve the liberties of the people and the vital- 
ity of free government. 

Such liad been tlie character of the great men who filled this 
place before the late civil war, and such is the instrument of 
despotism and corruption who has destroyed its character, per- 
verted its purpose, and fastened its great weight upon the neck 
of the people. 

After the introduction of the odious and abominable Funded 
System, and the venal ascension of Chase to the Supreme Bench, 
the guardianship of the Treasury j)assed into the hands of an 
obscure gentleman who had never filled a liigher position than 
that of officer in a village bank, whose principal duty and re- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



187 



quisite knowledge was the extraction of the hirgest interest from 
the smallest capital, singularly in conflict with that of Secretary 
of the Treasury, who must pay the greatest debt, with the least 
private oppression and public disaster. Such were the charac- 
ter, attainments, and qualifications of the new agent which called 
him to the care and supervision of the entire business property 
and financial destiny of the country, the collection and disburse- 
ment of the public moneys of the government. 

Mr. McCulloch being entirely unknown to our political, judi- 
cial or literary history, the people of the country have no confi- 
dence in either his ability to manage the public affairs, or his 
integrity to expose the enormous frauds and monstrous corrup- 
tions of Chase, his predecessor. 

It would be neither appropriate nor pardonable to censorious- 
ly comment upon the qualifications and experience possessed by 
this public officer^ to prepare him for the onerous and multifa- 
rious duties of his great public trust. 

But there seems an incurable mania raging among the people 
for filling exalted places with sturdy intellect, but which it is 
noteworthy, is not reciprocated by the intelligent business men of 
the country. 

Whilst politicians are chosing rail-splitters to fill the Presi- 
dential chair, and enfranchising barbarian negroes, the farmers 
are not willing to employ bank-clerks to split rails, or school- 
masters to cultivate the soil. 

This public functionary, with a patronizing air, proposes as 
truths, old absurdities which were exploded by facts and philos- 
ophy long before the Christain era, and which have never since 
been defended by any respectable authors upon political science. 

The conduct of INIr. McCulloch challenges criticism and 
provokes censure. His financial reports are the most extraor- 
dinary of our revolutionary times; balderdash which, if applied 
to government, will ruin the country and bankrupt the people, 
leaving its business prostrate and its responsibilities accumula- 
ting in a perpetually increasing ratio. 

His financial plans, and strangely interwoven political theories, 
are the most complete exhibition of that light-headedness pecu- 
liar to sudden elevation, for which nature has not always made 
adequate previous provision. 



188 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

The peoi^le have no right to complain of an officer because he 
holds office ; they should rather lend their full&st support to the 
earnest, trustworthy public servant who deals with the common- 
wealth so that the property of the people is subservient to their 
legitimate wants ; but when the agents of the people conspire 
with their enemies to overthrow civil government and enslave 
them, no expose can be too frank, fearless or early, and no re- 
sistance can be too positive or decisive. Sucli is the attempt 
now made upon the labor of the country through -the Secretary 
of the Treasury. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 189 



CHAPTER II. 

The Manner in which the Loan was Obtained. 

The manner in which this loan was obtained, is set forth in 
graphic style by the Secretary of the Treasury in the following 
extraordinary document : 

U. S. 7-30 LOAN. 

The Secretary of the Treasury gives notice that subscriptions 
will be received for Coupon Treasury Notes, payable three years 
from August 15, 1864, with semi-annual interest at the rate of 
seven and three-tentlis per cent, per annum, principal and interest 
both to be paid in lawful money. 

These notes will be convertible at the option of the holder, at 
maturity, into six per cent, gold-bearing bonds, payable not less 
than five nor more than twenty years from their date, as Gov- 
ernment may elect. They will be issued in denominations of 
$50, $100, 8500, $1,000 and $5,000, and all subscriptions must 
be for fifty dollars or some multiple of fifty dollars. 

As the notes draw interest from August 15, persons making 
deposits subsequent to that date must j)ay the interest accrued 
from date of note to date of deposit. 

Parties depositing twenty-five thousand dollars and upward 
for these notes at any one time, will be allowed a commission of 
one-quarter of one per cent. 

SPECIAL ADVANTAGES OF THIS LOAN. 

It is a National Savings Bank, oifering a higher rate of 
interest than any other, and the best security. Any savings bank 
which pays its depositors in U. S. Notes, considers that it is pay- 
ing in the best circulating medium of the country, and it cannot 
pay in anything better, for its ow^n assests are either in govern- 
ment securities or in notes or bonds payable in government pa- 
per. 



190 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CONVERTIBLE INTO A G PER CENT. 5-20 GOLD BOND. 

In addition to tlie very liberal interest on the notes for three 
years, this privilege of conversion is now worth about three per 
cent, per annum, for the current rate for 5-20 Bonds is not less 
than nine per cent, premium, and before the war the premium 
on six per cent. U. S. Stocks was over twenty per cent. It will 
be seen that the actual profit on this loan, at the present market 
rate, is not less than ten per cent per annum. 

ITS EXEMPTION FROM STATE OR MUNICIPAL TAXATION. 

Bat aside from all the advantages we have enumerated, a spe- 
cial Act of Congress exempts all Bonds and Treasury Notes from 
local taxation. On the average, this exemption is worth about 
two per cent, per annum, according to the rate of taxation in va- 
rious parts of the country. , 

It is believed that no securities offer so great inducements to 
lenders as those issued by the Government. In all other forms 
of indebtedness, the faith or ability of private parties or stock 
companies, or separate communities, only, is pledged for payment, 
while the whole property of the country is held to secure the 
discharge of all the obligations of the United States. 

Subecriptions will be received by the Treasurer of the United 
States at Washington, the several assistant Treasurers and desig- 
nated Depositories, and by the 

First National Bank of Cincinnati, O. 
Second " " " 

Third " " « 

Fourth " " « 

and by all National banks which are depositories of public money, 
and 

all respectable banks and bankers 

throughout the country will give further information, and 

AFFORD EVERY FACILITY TO SUBSCRIBERS. 

Secretary Chase assumes that a national debt is a national 
blessing. The substance of the argument to prove this absurdity 
assumes that the debt is due from the jieople of the United 
States to the people of the United States ; that tlie country owes 



CKIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 191 

that much to itself. But it is also a debt clue from the poor to 
the rich ; from labor to capital ; from the industrious, mIio have 
nothing but what tlioy earn ; to the opulent, who have amassed 
their fortunes from the labor of the poor. 

It is a debt paid from patient, honest industry, to impatient, 
pompous idleness. The very nature of this debt is more op- 
pressive that it is due from one class to another class of the same 
people, which makes the hardship greater ; that it taxes the 
humble classes to perpetuate an invidious distinction to their 
injury; stints the bread of their children to add to the extrava- 
gance of their insolent oppressor. No debt can become so in- 
vidious without this distinctive feature. 

The nearer you bring the oppressor and the oppressed in con- 
tact, the more crushing will be the slavery. 

The following absurdities are assumed in regard to our debt : 

1. That it has added the full amount of itself to our capital; 
that we are worth $4,000,000,000 more by being that amount in 
debt ; that war is the most profitable condition of society ; debt 
the only source of profit ; public robbers the only patriots ; and 
extravagance the highway to prosperity. 

2. That " a national debt is the only bond of union.'^ " That 
protection and excise are essential to each other ; both are neces- 
ary to sustain the national debt; neither alone could uphold 
its weight ; and without the national debt, neither system of 
revenue could endure with the indispensably necessary quality 
of steadiness and permanence." 

The purpose of the permanence of the debt is the settled pol- 
icy of the authors of the funded system. 

3. Upon this debt was erected the National Banking System, 
elsewhere examined. 

This remarkable paper was issued when the government was 
in the jaws of bankruptcy, and the exchange board of the great 
money market was hawking government bonds at thirty-four to 
forty cents on the dollar. The world was invited to pay into 
the treasury the worthless trash which had been paid out in ex- 
orbitant prices for worthless wares ; in exchange for which the 
government would give them finally one dollar in gold-bearing 
bonds at six per cent. 



192 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL, WAR. 

This prodigal oifer was nearly two hundred per cent, premium 
above the price paid, drawing nearly triple interest upon the 
original sum loaned, after three years' race in paper. As an in- 
ducement to perpetuate this robbery upon the public, the Secre- 
tary offered to pay one-fourth of one per cent, to every one who 
will deposite twenty-five thousand dollars or upwards at any one 
time. 

At this gloomy period, with the whole superstructure of gov- 
ernment groaning beneath the burden, this loan was proposed as 
a National Savings Bank, offering a higher rate of interest than 
any other. No other government offers such rates of interest ; 
no solvent government can pay more than three or four per 
cent. ; even European despotisms dare not impose heavier bur- 
dens upon an unwilling people for long periods, upon large 
sums. 

Governments ought never borrow money, but in times of 
peace prepare for war, which was the custom of the ancient re- 
publics, and a wide dej)arture from which is the destruction of re- 
publican government. 

Secretary Chase, who thus serves his jiolitical schemes, and 
replenishes his private purse, assures the purchaser of bonds 
that " The 'privilege of conversion is now worth about three per 
cent, jper annum for the current rate, for 5-20 bonds is not less 
than nine per cent, premium. On six per cent. TJ. S. Stocks be- 
fore the war the premium was over twenty per cent. It will be 
seen that the actual profit on this loan at the present market rate 
is not less than ten per cent, per annum." 

It seems incredible that such a publication should have been 
made by any public officer acting in his place. It is remarkable 
that the tax-payers read it with patience. 

This inviting investment was secured at about thirty-four 
cents on the dollar. Could the exaggerated statement of a bitter 
political enemy, in the heat of a violent campaign, assail the 
Secretary with more vehemence, or more effectually damage the 
credit of the government, than is done in this naked statement? 

This loan-broker assures the tax-payers that the debt draws a 
higher interest than any other borrower pays; and notifies the 
slaves, serfs, vassals and Helots of the United States, that these 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 193 

bonds are exempt from taxation. These arguments alone ought 
to have enlisted all the floating capital of the world. 

But he reaches the climax, and guarantees the borrower that 
these bonds are a first mortgage upon all of the property of the 
whole country, real or personal, and the people are the mortgagees. 

If these bonds and debts are valid, then the property of the 
country is worth nothing. If it were exposed at public sale in 
every financial metropolis of the world, and the capital of man- 
kind invited to competition in the market, the property would 
not realize the money necessary to pay the debts of the country. 
We are but tenants at will, paying rents on our own land. If 
our property is worth anything, it is just in proportion as this 
monstrous debt is repudiated. This is -an overpowering argu- 
ment in favor of repudiation, and can be answered only by re- 
pudiation. These bonds become more odious in their applica- 
tion as the basis of the Banking System, the base-born offspring 
of crime and misfortune, with the attributes of each. 

A NATIONAL DEBT IS A NATIONAL CURSE. 

In every despotism, a national debt is a necessity to the exer- 
cise of arbitrary power ; or the maintenance of the privileged 
orders, who employ the wealth of the country to subjugate labor 
to taxation, which is the specific office of a national debt. The 
four great powers of Europe have each a permanent national 
debt, and employ the people in wars of conquest to prevent revo- 
lution at home or in throwing oif the oppression of the constant 
and unrelenting system of taxation ; which alternates their condi- 
tion between slavery for the support of the profligate royalty and 
the conquest of other helpless, harmless people, to increase the 
extent of their domain and the number of the slaves. 

Debt. Interest. Debt per capita. 

France in 1853, $2,304,000,000.. ..|132,360,000.... $62.12 

Austria in 1864, 1,263,400,000.... 75,100,000,... 36.00 

Great Britain in 1863, 4,000,918,944.... 127,564,548.... 20.00 
United States in 1866, 4,000,000,000.... 292,000,000.... 125.00 
Russia in 1864, 1,116,800,000.... 27,100,000.... 19.64 

Thaddeus Stevens, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and 
Means of* the House of Representatives, says : 
13 



194 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Onr war debt is estimated at from three to four billions of 
dollars. In my judgment, when all is funded and the pensions 
capitalized, it will reach more than four billions. 

The interest at 6 per cent, only, (now much more) $240,000,000 

The ordinary expenses of our Government are 120,000,000 

For some years the extraordinary expenses of our 

army and navy will be 110,000,000 



$470,000,000 

Four hundred and seventy millions to be raised by taxation ! 
Our present heavy taxes will not in ordinary years, produce but 
little more than half that sum. Can our people bear double 
their present taxation ? , He who unnecessarily causes it, will be 
accursed from generation to generation. It is fashionable to be- 
little our public debt, lest the people should become alarmed, and 
political parties should suffer. I have never found it wise to de- 
ceive the people. They can always be trusted with the truth. 
Capitalists will not be affected, for they can not be deceived. 
Confide in the people, and you will avoid repudiation. Deceive 
them, and lead them into false measures, and you may produce 
it. 

We pity the poor Englishmen whose national debt and burden- 
some taxation we have heard deplored from our childhood. The 
debt of Great Britain is just about as much as ours, (4,000,000,- 
000) four billions. But in effect it is but half as large, — it bears 
but three per cent, interest. The current year the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer tells us, the interest Avas $131,806,990, ours, when 
all shall be funded, will be nearly double. 

As the prelude and consequence of the monstrous doctrines 
taught by Secretary Chase and the consequent issue of a volatile 
paper money, every avenue of trade Avas filled with an inflated 
currency. The men who commenced and carried through the 
war, appealed to the avarice of the rich, the fears of the timid, 
and the love of plunder, to the speculators and stock gamblers, un- 
til the alarming spectacle was presented to the financial world, of a 
prosperity based upon the violation of every mcII knoM'u axiom 
of political economy. Indeed, every project was a ncAV inven- 
tion in the progressive march of power and glory. Albeit, the 
same thing had been exploded at least once in every generation 
of thirty years, and had as certainly ruined every people who 



• CRIMES OF THE CIVIL "WAE. 195 

liad foolislily adopted it. Every discarded barbarity -wliich liad 
been stamped with the o])probriuni of the Christian era was her- 
alded as a new and bold stroke of military policy, indicated by 
humanity and justified by necessity, as the offspring of genius 
and harbinger of the millenium. 

The charlatans who control public aifairs, quite as careful of 
their fame as they have been of their power, j)ropose to defend 
their crimes as virtues, and commend their ignorance and stupid- 
ity as the highest intelligence and most brilliant invention. 
Every thing was accounted marvellous, because, in fact, it was friv- 
olous and insolent. Balderdash has been served up to the people 
as profound discoveries in the sciences of arms, finances and gov- 
ernment, and strange enough, the people crowded together like 
sheep, trembled with fear, listened and believed, exercised faith 
and quietly put on the yoke of bondage. These things ^vere 
SCARCELY resisted. The base and shameful cowardice of those 
who assumed leadership, the wicked and heartless betrayal of 
their old friends by those who were entrusted with the defence 
of liberty and the mercenary instincts of those who engaged in 
a war of plunder, weakened the ranks of the friends of free in- 
stitutions and emboldened the enemies of liberty until at last the 
great body of people became tame, lost their courage and dared 
not open their mouths through fear of drunken vagabonds, wear- 
ing government epaulettes, and licensed to shoot down whoever 
might cross their pathway. Those reckless mercenaries gathered 
up from the purlieus of cities, or those dastardly wretches who, 
through fear of the battle-field and long continued habits of 
crime, prepared to commit every manner of depredation, were 
stationed through the country for that purpose, ready to be hissed 
on by a mob of civilians who ^vere making fortunes by the war ; 
and ecclesiastics, whose salaries -were regulated by the fluctuations 
of the currency. Never did the resistless flood-tide sweep away 
all obstructions in its path more completely, than did this rain of 
lampblack and rags, greenbacks and bonds, contracts and ofiiciai 
positions, which found their way everywhere. 

Boot-blacks and barbers, hack-drivers and ostlers, prostitutes 
and pimps, had open oyster suppers and public receptions ; whilst 
gamblers hung their destinies upon the good or ill luck of the wheel 



196 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAPw • 

of fortune, and would light their cigars with government scrip. 
The city hotels and fashionable watering-places Avere infested 
with a fortunate rabble who drove true gentility from the country, 
and made arbitrary changes in the laws of fashion, radical as the 
brokers and government financiers had made in the laws of 
money and commerce. Ignorant men and gross Avomen, fresh 
from the army, or dripping with petroleum, scandalized society ; 
whilst the cultivated minds of the country sought society in se- 
clusion, or went in disgust to foreign lands. 

Everybody was rich, money was begging owners, everything 
commanded enormous prices, which kept advancing ; money was 
increasing in amount until one dollar (gold and silver) command- 
ed nearly three dollars of the government pledges. Thus was 
a double crime perpetrated upon the country. First. Every dol- 
lar which had been loaned in good faith in gold, often in cases to 
save valuable property from execution, was now paid in scrip, 
which had no intrinsic value and was subject to the mutations of 
a profligate paper currency. The debtor paid his debt in these 
government pledges, the courts came to the rescue and repudiated 
two-thirds of the value of the debt. This was so universal that 
it is not a violent presumption that all of the outstanding debts 
of the country were paid with fifty cents on the dollar ; and in 
fact, fully one-half of the whole indebtedness of private individ- 
uals was in this way utterly repudiated; and when the injured 
party appealed to the courts, the courts sustained the repudiation 
and decreed that the debts should be cancelled by the payments 
of depreciated government scrip substituted for gold and silver. 
This Avas, in fact, no payment of the debt, but simply a transfer 
of it from the man who paid it to the government, Avhich as- 
sumed it by the issue of its paper; and this money Avhich he 
seemed to get was the very shadow of the money which he was 
entitled to; and after receiving this mere paper, he had to be taxed 
enormously to pay the very debt Avhich was thus transferred from 
the debtor to the government ; and from the government back to 
the creditor, to be paid in taxes ; and the very debt wliich Avas 
due him and Avith Avhich he had proposed to pay outstanding 
debts, Avhich AA'ere a lien upon his property ; but the lien simply 
changed its OAvner and was finally placed back upon his property 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 197 

in a tax of perpetual duration, due tlie government, to be issued 
out to its specially favoured creditors in gold. But this system 
of finance became noisome in every market ; the government was 
the cheif buyer, overriding all competition. When the dray- 
man, planter or railroad wanted to buy a horse, the government 
agent outbid him or drove him entirely out of the market. 

The Federal contractor went in competition with the butcher, 
to buy cattle; and made the soldier in the field bid against his 
half-starved family at home, to increase the price of beef. The 
government agent was bidding against the people in the price of 
every commodity. This reduced the country into two general 
classes. The one class of government employees, the other were 
serfs to support and subsist them. Every article used for the 
sustenance of life, or the comforts of living, was seized upon by 
the government agents, who knew no bounds to prices, except 
their own whims. The jioorer people had to take the inferior 
articles at a vastly increased rate. The government managers 
v/ere unrestricted in their extravagance. They measured the 
capacity to meet contracts only by the power of the government 
printing-presses to issue promises to pay. This was the only re- 
straint imposed upon those who held the entire control of the 
property of the country. With the whole land under martial 
law, the Congress under duress, the independent judges in jail, 
newspapers that wrote one word of the tendency of the govern- 
ment to bankruptcy, were summarily suppressed; and public 
speakers hurried off to forts, who denounced this public profli- 
gacy. In was in this state of affairs an easy matter to print 
money ad libitum, and involve the country in a debt of thousands 
of millions of dollars. It requires but a slight acquaintance w'ith 
the philosophy of finance to understand that the true method for 
the conduct of a great civil or foreign war, is to contract prices 
with the increase of expenditures ; that the rich, who hoard provis- 
ions, shall bear the weight of the burdens imposed upon the coun- 
try, rather than the poor, whose existence is at stake in the vacilla- 
tion of prices of the necessaries of life, shall be driven to star- 
vation. When usurpation is the chief element in the conduct 
of the war, and starvation is added to force to drive the poor 
into the ranks of the army — then forced loans should be made 



198 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

from the rich to encourage voluntary service, instead of driving 
poor men from their families into the slaughter pens. This 
Avould equalize the burdens of the war and present the accumu- 
lations of a burthensome debt upon the people. In carrying on 
the late civil war, the government borrowed everything and paid 
nothing; intrigued with the banks, that in collusion they might 
rob the country of everything. To initiate the fraud, it was pre- 
tended that the government was under lasting obligations to the 
bankers for favors of money, when in fact the bankers lent noth- 
ino- but the weight of their credit to oppress the people and 
carry out the war ; that in return the government might use the 
banking-system as an engine of perpetual oppression of the peo- 
ple to enrich its officers. 

After borrowing everything which was to loan, they then bor- 
rowed from the industry, liberty and hopes of every succeeding 
generation, to enrich the profligate extortioners, usurers, specu- 
lators, adventurers and mercenaries who, having destroyed the 
country by war, would enslave the people by taxation. 

The true standard by which to measure the amount of taxes 
paid by a people, is the diiference in the prices paid for the same 
article at different times, under nearly the same general circum- 
stances. This is the only means where nearly the whole amount 
is carefully concealed under cover of duties, excises and other 
deceitful means of hiding taxations, which have been so gener- 
ally resorted to by the treacherous legislation of modern times. 

The effect of this war and consequent taxation in regard to 
the cost of living. Mark the contrast with tlie prices we paid : 

GROCERIES. 

Democratic Frice in 1860. Abolition Price in 1865. 

Teas 45a50c. per lb. Teas $1 00a^2 50 

Sugars 8 9c. " Sugars 20 LO 

Coffees 14 16c. " Coffees 05 

Nutmegs 50 56c. " Nutmegs $2 00 

Pepper 8 9c. " Pepper 65 

Allspice 6 8c. " Allspice 50 

Cinnamon 20 22c. " Cinnamon $1 00 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 199 



DRY GOODS — DOMESTIC. 

Brown Slieetings . . 8 Jc. per yd. Brown Sheetings . .65c. per yd. 

Prints, Cal icoes, etc Slc . " Prints, Calicoes, etc 40c. '■ 

Bleached Muslins.. .5Sc. " Bleached Muslins.. ,75c. " 

Canton Flannels... 10c. " Canton Flannels... 90c. " 

FOREIGN. 

Delaines 15^0. peryd. Delaines , 75c. peryd. 

Dress Goods 25c. " Dress Goods 80c. " 

Velvets $2 50 " Velvets $12 00 " 

RAW COTTON, ETC. 

Cotton laps 18c. per lb. Cotton laps $1 75 per lb. 

Wadding 40c. " Wadding 2 20 " 

Carpet Chain 20c. " Carpet Chain 110 " 

Lamp Wick 20c. " Lamp Wick 150 " 

METALS, ETC. 

Lead 6c. per lb. Lead..... 32c. per lb. 

Antimony 13c. " Antimony 75c. " 

Block Tin 31c. " Block Tin 90c. " 

COAL. 

Of which the poor man's fire consumes as much as that which 
blazes in the rich man's parlor — in former days could be had 
for four 07' five dollars ; it now costs fourteen and fifteen dollars 
a ton. 

CLOTHS. 

Satinets 45a50c. per yd. $1 75 per yd. 

Broadcloths, Cassimeres, etc., have increased from 100 to l50 
per ct. 

Drugs have increased in price on an average of 200 per ct. 

Tobacco — Manufactured Cavendish Tobacco has risen from 
35 cents to $1 25 per pound. 

Cigars have advanced from $20 to $60 and $200 per thous- 
and. 

Foreign Stationery, since the scarcity of specie, has risen 
50 per cent. 

The above table made out from the actual market prices, is 
a very fair exhibit of what the masses of the poor sufler, as well as 



200 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

pay for, in contribution to the debt. The increasing pressure 
upon the poor of the country, is precipitating the crisis. 

The poverty of the country and the sufferings of the people, 
are the irreputable arguments which must stare Chief Justice 
Chase in the eyes when the people have turned upon their oppres- 
sors. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 201 



CHAPTER III. 

The War Debt is not a Just Debt. 

What is a just and what an unjust debt? To fasten upon 
thirty millions of people, by a minority of votes, and transmit 
to their posterity in the most palpable case, will always be a 
matter of doubt which can never be satisfactorily determined 
either by the contention of debate or the conflict of war. 

There never yet has been a party in power in any government 
which excited or prosecuted a war, whether to satiate revenge or 
gratify ambition, that did not at the same time assume the con- 
test as not only justifiable, but just ; not only necessary, but holy. 
Such is the brief epitome of the arguments upon all wars. Such 
were declared the character and purposes of the wars of the 
Stuarts to crush the proud spirit of liberty in the English people, 
the war of King George to enslave America, wars against 
Ireland, Scotland and the East Indies by Great Britain, — indeed 
all wars by all tyrants. 

Every war has been the heated theme of songs and prayers, 
thanksgiving and praise, on every side, by all parties engaged; 
has been used as the machinery by which the human passions 
might be inflamed to their highest pitch of intensity ; and re- 
ligious sentiment used as the vehicle in which tyrants rode into 
power, and the habiliments worn by demons to enter the high 
priesthood, bearing the palm-wreath of victory or making their 
mournful dirge as victory or defeat befel them or the other army in 
conflict. This evident consciousness of right was not confined to one 
party alone. Each contending side was alike appealing to heaven 
for vindication of their mottoes, and denunciation of the wickedness 
of their enemies. Indeed, it is the common and remarkable feature 
of the history of all wars, that the same self-adulatory harangues 
in very nearly the same phraseology, making due allowance for 



202 CRIMES or THE CIVIL WAR. 

the difference of language and the habits, passions or customs of 
the people, have been employed in every country only with the 
slightest difference in America and Russia, England and China, 
Spain and Judea. The same imprecations of those they met 
in battle seem stereotyped in the mind, and painted only in new 
colors, Mdthout a change of feature. 

Held by the light of Christianity, all wars are wicked. They 
are doubly wicked when Christians are engaged in mutual de- 
struction ; but they are atrocious beyond all power of expression 
when they involve people of a common blood, brethren in the 
flesh and in the spirit. 

It is only when pervading infidelity and thorough corruption 
coalesce to destroy the Church and State together, that such wars 
can transpire and escape the opprobrium of both civilization and 
Christianity. 

All such wars are at best but organized systems of robbery, 
with a common tendency and common end to the ruin of the 
country, the overthrow of just government, and the robbery and 
degradation of the people. 

In full view of the wrongs and evils of war, the self-evident 
rights of man, and the clearly wicked and spiteful character of 
this war, what authority will be called in requisition to justify 
the attempt to bind generation after generation, loaded with an 
immoveable debt, to the car-wheel of bankruptcy, and destroy 
our form of government. 

This debt was incurred to carry on a war conceived in the 
foulest passions of depraved human nature, carried on for the 
mercenary purposes of personal gain by a systematized corruption, 
cruelty and crime; condemned by every conception of justice, 
and outdoing in all of the elements of wrong, the startling crimes 
charged by Edmund Burke against AYarren Hastings (whilst 
Governor of India) in the British Parliament. 

In all of this wicked, cruel war, there has been but these un- 
changeable objects in view : to glut the avarice of the rich, to 
satiate the vengeance of the S2)iteful, and minister to the most 
grovelling appetites of the vicious; to make the people the 
slaves of money and their armies the tools of tyrants. 

This argument in behalf of the late civil war is somewhat 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 203 

changed, but is not strengthened, when the proposition assumes 
that the Avar was carried on (which is now upon all hands con- 
ceded) to abolish the system of African servitude in the United 
States. 

The argument concedes two points presented in this review : 

1. There was no evil in slavery which could be abolished by 
war, to give it efficiency in times of peace. This is quite clear 
in itself, but it is fully conceded in the fact of the government, 
by the change demanded in the Constitution, and through du- 
ress and fraud added to it. 

2. The great improvement in the condition of the negro by 
his transfer from Africa to America, will place it beyond cavil 
in history that he suffered no evil in the exchange of countries, 
conditions and character. 

It is quite as apparent that he has received no benefit from the 
late transition from organized protection to social anarchy. 

3. AVhatever may liave been the will of the people — which is 
the great common law of America when legally expressed — 
concerning the status of the negro, there has been nothing done 
for his benefit by war which might not have been far better done 
peaceably, without the shedding of blood, the destruction of 
property, and the overthrow of the republican form of govern- 
ment, the triple enormities perpetrated by the late revolution. 

The debt is not just in this, that we have had no quid pro 
quo. 

The people are not bound in justice to pay this 

DEBT. 

We have received nothing in return for it. Our currency is 
destroyed, our liberties gone, our institutions overthrown, leaves 
us nothing for all that we have lost, all that we have squandered 
and all that we have surrendered, to say nothing of the enor- 
mous debt that we have contracted and yet hangs over us. The 
eternal law that every sale implies a price, the quid pro quo 
leaves this debt without approximating a material consideration, 
adequate or inadequate to its payment. 

This debt might have been avoided. 

The evidence is everywhere at hand. By a strict adherence 
to the constitution in the enunciation of political principles, it 



204 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

never could have transpired. An honest, earnest address to the 
people from President Lincoln after his election, would have 
thoroughly settled the public mind, quieted excitement, prevent- 
ed civil wars, with the consequent blood, carnage and crime. 

Upon the inauguration of the President, a clear and implicit 
declaration of his purpose and constitutional integrity would 
have disarmed those already in arms, and restored quiet to the 
country, and utterly ruined the leaders of the secession move- 
ment by destroying the pretexts for secession. 

Congress could have arrested the war by manly avowals in the 
beginning of its session in 1861, notwithstanding the well ground- 
ed distrust which had fixed itself in the public mind. By the 
least exhibition of justice upon the part of the administration, 
the war would have been avoided. 

The administration of Lincoln saw tlie absolute necessity of 
genera] public bribery to make the shadows of money abundant 
among the people, and intoxicate them with the appearances of 
wealth, and postpone taxation to posterity. They used no more 
restraints upon expenditures than the profligate libertine, who 
measures his extravagance by his power to destroy property and 
capacity to create debt. 

• It was in view of creating war and preventing the exposure 
of the nakedness of the administration, that presses were destroy- 
ed, free speech prohibited and elections treated as a farce, to des- 
troy the liberties of the people, with all of the solemn forms of 
law. 

The administration of the government forced issues be- 
tween capital and labor, arbitrary power and rational govern- 
ment. It has been made our duty in self-preservation to teach 
tyrants that all elections shall be fair and free, to teach usurpers 
that the will of the people shall be the supreme law of the land. 
That no debt contracted to enslave them shall be paid. Self-res- 
pect imposes this duty upon the people, to impress this lesson 
upon despots, that legislation shall be pure and untrammelled. 
It is a duty that we owe to free government, that no statute en- 
acted, no debt contracted, no obligation imposed by corrupt or 
unfair legislation, shall be of such binding force as that a failure 
in the courts to declare them void, shall prevent the ^^eople at 
their will, from repudiating them. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 205 

This will instruct capitalists and gamblers in stocks, who 
swindle themselves into wealth, that they may not trample labor 
into the dust with impunity, nor safely connive at the overthrow 
of constitutional government, to amass immense wealth. 



206 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The War Debt is Unconstitutional. 

By what authority did the President destroy State govern- 
ment? 

" The United States shall guarantee to every State in this 
Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each 
of them against invasion, and, on application of the Legislature, 
from domestic violence." Const. Art. IV, Sec. 4. 

What Governor or Legislature of what State applied to the 
President to protect them against domestic violence? 

On the contrary, when the President asked the Governors of 
Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri and Kentucky, to do this, they 
indignantly declined the work of butchery proposed ; the Presi- 
dent had no right to invade any State. 

There was no domestic violence ; the operation of law was 
unclogged until the President commenced the work of disinte- 
gration. There were no changes made in the State laws and 
State constitutions, which were not made in conformity Avith the 
organic laws. 

By what authority did the President imprison the Legislature 
of Maryland ? incarcerate Judges of the several States of the 
Union ? 

" The judicial power of the United States shall not be con- 
strued to extend to any suit of law or equity, commenced or to 
be prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of 
another State or by subjects of a foreign power." Xlth Amend- 
ment to the Constitution. 

How much less the right to wage war against a State. What 
may not be done peaceably, may not be forcibly done. Judgment 
always precedes execution. A war levied against a State is 
unconstitutional. A debt contracted for such purpose is likewise 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 207 

unconstitutional. No such war could grow out of the Consti- 
tution, nor the debt be of valid obligation. 

The j)Gople are not bound by the Constitution to pay this 
debt, because it was entirely unauthorized by the Constitution. 
It was created in violation of the Constitution, for the purpose 
of overthrowing the Constitution. 

From the beginning there was scarcely anything lawfully done • 
and what was otherwise lawfully done, was done in an unlawful 
manner. 

The general emulation in civil and military life, was to see who 
could set the laws most at defiance. 

These facts are conceded by the authors and instigators of the 
war. 

1. They passed acts of immunity to cover their crimes. 

2. They offered amendments to the Constitution to legalize 
their usurpations. 

3. They propose amendments to make the debt obligatory 
upon the country. 

How can a debt bind a people which is not made according to 
law? 

We are not bound by the theory of our Government 
to pay this debt. 

The war was waged in violation of the theory of our govern- 
ment by consent in the exact form, spirit and purpose of arbi- 
trary government, to destroy the republican system. 

How then, can such a debt have constitutional force or obli- 
gation to bind any one, since it was made in the interest of self- 
destruction, and to pay for violence done to and butchery of the 
people. 

In its stead was a monarchy in everything but the name, in 
which the President was guarded in the style of the Czar and 
Sultan, w^ith all of the brutality of the one and the pomp of the 
other ; with all of the trappings of monarchy and the violence 
of despotism. 

With the overthrow of our system and theory of government, 
and the adoption of the imperial style and military guard, the 
most intimate friend of Washington, Jefferson or Monroe, would 
have entirely failed to recognize the old and familiar forms that 
gave us characteristic distinction everywhere. 



208 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

A new and unique system was substituted. We had the forms of 
republican government enforced or obstructed, or both, as occasion 
might demand or necessity might justify. It was not republican, 
for nobody was free. The citizens and soldiers were alternately 
arrested, State and military officers were spending their terms in 
guard-houses or military jarisons, as whim, interest or caprice 
might suggest, at the will of their masters, who were not always 
known, for it was as difficult to learn who directed affairs as it 
was to know who Avas loyal. Everybody was conscripted ; 
everybody was an officer : everybody was arrested ; everybody 
was removed from office; everybody was reinstated in turn, just 
as the President might be persuaded by the last committee of 
merchants, ministers, loyal leaguers, free negroes or ruling mad- 
ams of the sanitary commission or sewing society. Never was 
there such a medley of tragedy and farce, murder and mockery, 
of grave pronunciamentos and the most ridiculous government 
follies. Anarchy, which knows no law, was reduced to a system 
by which anarchies were to be let loose and restrained as occasion 
might require, or circumstances might dictate. From the gov- 
ernment nothing could be known of its character except occa- 
sionally an act in lucid intervals. 

We instance but ^one form of crime : 

LETTRE DE CACHET — OUR FRENCH DESPOTISM. 

This extraordinary proceeding is entirely unknown to the in- 
stitutions of this country, and quite as great a stranger to the 
British Common Law. It, of course, could not issue from our 
courts of judicature, and is entirely unknown to the more stern, 
though more candid, process of military courts. 

So utterly rejjugnant to all sense of justice, liberality and the 
universally accorded rights of man is it, that it has never been 
exercised anywhere in the despotism of Europe, except very 
rarely indeed, before the seventeenth century, and then only by 
the most heartless of all the European tyrants. 

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, Louis the 
Great, (XIV) then in power, gave to the French throne a jDOwer 
and magnificence which eclipsed that of all of his predecessors. 
His reign Avas an era distinguished by great learning, fashion 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 209 

and gaiety. The leitres de cachet had formerly been used to 
delay the course of justice, but during the reign of this monarch, 
any person who could find access to court — to either the King 
or his Ministers — could obtain these lettres; and to gratify 
malice, or serve the ends of mercenary purposes, upon the most 
trivial pretexts ; and by this means thousands of persons were 
imprisoned for life, or for a term of years. So monstrous was 
the character of these outrages committed, that the people were 
intimidated, money extorted, suits founded by injustice, with- 
drawn dowers, marriages made available, and, in short, the most 
intolerable slavery and abject servitude which ever disgraced 
any people, was quietly effected during the reign of this French 
Prince. 

But during the reign of Louis XV, France was almost entire- 
ly engaged in war, and gave but little attention to the govern- 
ment of the people at home. She lost the Canadas in a war with 
Great Britain, and came nigh ruining the army, navy, treasury, 
and church, and entirely prostrated all that was left of the judi- 
ciary. 

The ministers of this monarch used these lettres to most sin- 
gular effect. Indeed, they became a matter of commerce, and 
were openly and publicly sold by the strumpet of one of the 
ministers of the\ing. They were also granted by the king for 
the purpose of shielding his favorites or their friends from the 
consequences of their crimes. They were sometimes bought to 
rid a family of heirs who stood immediately in the way of an 
expectant inheritance, and for the purpose of gratifying spites in 
family quarrels. During the contentions of the Mirabeau fam- 
ily, not less than fifty-nine lettres de cachet were issued by one 
or the other of the family, of course, for monied consideration. 
But the evils of this extraordinary proceeding did not stop with 
these. 

Independent members of Parliament and of the Magistracy 
were proscribed and punished by means of these war warrants. 
This corruption became enormous, and was in the French history 
what Jeffrey's campaign was to England ; and when Louis the 
XYI. tried to control and remedy it he failed. 

Among all of the evils and blessings of the French Revolu- 
14 



210 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

tion, this one thing will be worthy of eternal remembrance — 
that it swept away this monstrous evil which never had an ex- 
istence before among civilized people, and which has never been 
since revived nntil Wm. H. Seward, of America, inaugura- 
ted it as a part of the administration of the General Govern- 
ment, in violation of the Constitution of the United States, 
every instinct of civil liberty, and the very genius of free gov- 
ernment. 

This is the scandal of the nineteenth century, the opprobrium 
of the history of North America, and it is most remarkable how 
nearly in resemblance the use made of this warrant by French 
tyrants is to that use made of it by the American tyrant, whose 
villainy promises to Benedict Arnold but secondary claims to 
supreme infamy in American history. 

Judge Taney was threatened with imprisonment for rendering 
a legitimate judicial decision in a case legitimately before him. 

Mayor Barrett, of Washington City, was imprisoned because 
he would not be the tool of a member of the Cabinet, for purely 
mercenary purposes. Mr. Barrett needs no higher evidence of 
his loyalty to the government, than his appointment as a commis- 
sioner to value emancipated slaves, and no nobler exhibition of 
his real manhood than his refusal to accept the appointment. 
The imprisonment of innocent men all over the country, to gratify 
private malice, the arrest of whole legislative bodies, the despot- 
ism of the central power, in confining men and withholding the 
charge for which they are confined, makes the analogy complete 
between the use of these Mtres in France and in America. 

This, however, must be observed, that in France, the lettres 
de cachet were always allowed to be a violation of those hered- 
itary and traditional rights of Frenchmen which they had always 
enjoyed. 

But for the exercise of all these extraordinary powers, Mr. 
Seward says in his letter to Lord Lyons, October 14th, 1861, 
" That for the purpose of quelling the insurrection, the Presi- 
dent has the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus when- 
ever, wheresoever, and in whatsoever extent * * * in his 
judgment it requires." And the tenor of the Secretary's arguments 
is to prove that this is in accordance with the Constitution of the 
United States. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 211 

The following is jierhaps even more extraorclinary than any- 
thing upon the subject. '* For the exercise of that discretion, he, 
as Avell as his advisers, among whom are the Secretaries of State 
and of "War, is responsible by law before the highest tribunal of 
the Republic, and amenable also to the judgment of his country- 
men, and the enlightened opinion of the civilized world. 

This is the language of Mr. Seward to a Foreign Court. To 
his countrymen he is scarcely so courteous, but makes the condi- 
tion of their release depend upon the relinquishment of their 
right to hold him and his advisers "responsible by law" before 
the highest tribunal of the Republic. 

Whatever may be the judgment of his countrymen, "the en- 
lightened oi^inion of the civilized world " shudders at the revi- 
val in America of the despotism of the 17th and 18th centuries 
in France. 

Nor does the plea of necessity make it better. This plea is as 
old as crime itself. Cain says the slaughter of Abel was neces- 
sary — To what ? That he might be the only heir of Adam ; 
the only friend of God — but not to the triumph of right. 
England pleads necessity for the oppression of Ireland. Aus- 
tria has the same plea in extenuation of her wrongs to Hungary. 
So pleads Russia in her treatment of Poland — Necessary to 
what ? The power of the one and the wrongs of the other. 
But not necessary to the cause of justice, the triumph of right. 
"What necessity for these warrants of Mr. Seward ? to put down 
the war ? No ; the Constitution can do that amply, easily and 
fully. Necessary to make men love the institutions of the coun- 
try ? No. Necessary for what ? To keep tyrants in power, to 
overthrow the Government, to crush out the spirit of Liberty, 
to invert the engine of progress and drive back the car of civil- 
ization three centuries, to hold council with and learn at the feet 
of French tyrants. Oh, Lord, how long shall these things be ! 
Shall not the ballot-box bring "the judgment of our country- 
men " to hurl these men from power and welcome back the de- 
parted spirit of Liberty ; or shall not the repudiated debt teach 
capital the danger of loaning money to destroy liberty. 



212 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER V. 

The War Deut is a Breach of Trust. 

A DEBT MAY BE CONTRACTED UNDER SUCH SYSTEMATIC 
BREACHES OF TRUST UPON THE PART OF PUBLIC OFFICERS, aS 

to have no moral binding force upon the people, though ostensi- 
bly for the most unquestionable public good. This is especially- 
true where the contractors were privy to the fraud. 

The only security that popular governments have for the faith- 
ful performance of contracts, that nothing stronger than public 
opinion is held for the payment of debts, because no suits can be 
entertained by a sovereign power to coerce itself. 

When the questions which originate wars and public debts, 
largely divide the public mind, then the justice and probabilities 
of its liquidation become a matter just as doubtful as the vaga- 
ries of human opinion and political integrity. But the question 
may be evenly balanced in the public judgment. Public opin- 
ion may be restrained concerning it. It becomes still more un- 
certain, how far the public conscience may feel bound for the pay- 
ment ; but each succeeding decade with its accumulating respon- 
sibilities, will feel less and less bound in honor to meet an obli- 
gation which, at the best, holds but a feeble grasp upon the pub- 
lic responsibility. 

When it is clear that the majority of a full million and a half 
of actual voters, not engaged in war, were opposed to the war as 
a remedy for existing evils, or that the debt and war were both 
frauds upon the public credulity and destructive of our system 
of government, then the payment of the debt becomes impossi- 
ble. 

This is precisely the case of our war and war debt. Abraham 
Lincoln reached the Presidency by a great minority in both the 
first and second elections. In the second election, the minority 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 213 

was even greater tlian in the first, amounting to 1,200,000 less 
than a majority of the votes of the people, not accounting the fraud 
and force, applied to divest the election of every attribute of 
choice. 

But the strength of this argument is irresistible. Every vote 
cast at the election of 1860, was given to candidates pledged in 
public professions of political faith, including the ablest speeches 
of Mr. Lincoln himself, against coercion or war. He had, in the 
most public manner avowed, and in the most solemn oaths sworn 
before heaven and earth, not to interfere with the existing con- 
dition of things in the government. The right of one-half of 
the States to overrun and destroy the other half, had been denied 
by all of the leading statesmen. North and South, in every period 
of our history, and by the courts in the exercise of their plenary 
powers. 



214 CKIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER VI. 



We are unable to pay this Debt. 



Theee Is no subject upon which even statesmen are so fre- 
quently the victims of delusion as that of the resources of their 
own country. Whether in regard to the relation which their 
wealth bears to their indebtedness, or the relation which their 
resources bear to that of other nations ; and quite as vague are 
their notions about their ability to pay enormous debts. One 
source of this deception is the value which they attach to prop- 
erty, based upon the crazy inflation of the currency and the cor- 
rupt imaginations of speculators engaged in stock-gambling. 

This delusion is not peculiar to the financiers of our own age 
and country. It has been universal. Such is the intoxicating 
nature of trade and commerce in the height of a paper bubble. 

Just before the outbreak of the French Eevolution, which 
was precipitated by national bankruptcy, and the reckless vio- 
lence which always accompanies bold loaning and extravagant 
living, even the most illustrious English statesman were dazzled 
and carried away with the grandeur of its profligacy, and for a 
time believed the French finances solid and immoveable, because 
the national credit was pledged for its redemption. 

Edmund Burke was so completely captivated with Necker's 
theory, that when Necker wrote a history of his political views 
and administration, confessing his failure, and the fallacies of 
his opinion, Burke was dismayed and mortified at his own sim- 
plicity in being the victim of such hollow expedients ; nearly 
every one of which remind one of the present times. Indeed, 
in all times, these expedients and subterfuges are the same. 

The younger William Pitt, the most searching analytical mind 
of his day, saw entirely through ISTecker's financial scheme, and 
the ruin that would follow it, and in consequence, refused the 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 215 

tempting offer of the hand of decker's gifted daughter, Madame 
de Stael. 

It were amusing were it not sorrowful, to contemplate the 
picture which Secretary Chase has drawn of his financial plans 
in the ruin of the country. A complete detail of the financial 
history of the Treasury and the currency, with its shams, tricks, 
and villainies consequent upon them, practiced by himself, Avould 
rival in romance the confessions of Barnum in the exliibition of 
his Japanese Mermaid, Joyce Heath, Tom Thumb, the woolly 
horse, and "What is it?"; — the low artifices to which they 
both resorted to deceive the people ; the one in shows for their 
amusement, the other in falsehoods to overthrow their liberty. 

We have never duly considered the j^rescnt condition of our 
resources since the conclusion of the war, and the preliminary 
questions to be settled before we commence our calculation. 

1. The war drove out of the country thousands of millions of 
capital, much of its own bullion, in consequence of its general 
unsafety. 

2. It destroyed thousands of millions of dollars of capital in 
the Southern States, Avhich could no longer be taxed. 

3. The destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars in the 
Confederate States rendered unavailable other hundreds of 
millions of dollars in the Northern States, which were depend- 
ent upon the South for a market. 

4. There has been no increase of a single article produced in 
the United States which could be exported, or added to the fi- 
nancial prosperity of the country, except kerosene oil, which is 
a late discovery, and insignificant matter. 

A blind, stupid and destructive fanaticism assumes that our re- 
sources are incomparably greater than at any time heretofore. 
This they demonstrate by the magnitude of our public debt, 
which they denominate as so much active ca])ital ; and the de- 
struction of public and private property, which they parade as a 
triumph over treason. 

The chief source of this delusion is that they account our 
money as capital, when in fact, it is the certified evidence of our 
debt and poverty. The bonds held are simply the amount of 
debt which we hold against ourselves. 



216 CEIMES OF IHE CIVIL WAR. 

There is no more common expression or delusion in regard to 
the public debt than this, that since the de!)t is mostly due 
among ourselves, and bring as much property from one as they 
take from another. 

This is not true, in fact, any more than that it is an argument. 
The bonds are not all due among ourselves ; but upon the 
contrary, they were directly sold, to European capitalists, 
as far as it was possible to get them into that market, where 
they are quoted from the market reports of London, Amster- 
dam, and Paris; but millions of these bonds Avere bought in 
America by European capitalists, and re-invested in bank stocks 
under European auspices. 

It was this investment of European capital in American se- 
curities which was the most complete solution of the visit of the 
European capitalists to this country, which excited as much curios- 
ity, and elicited as much parade, as did Japanese Tommy's ad- 
vent into the city of New York. 

It is the most disgusting form of balderdash to maintain that 
poor men own bonds, or any other interest-bearing securities in 
America, any more than in Europe. 

The mere fact that some of these bonds are the property of 
American citizens, makes it in no sense different from their 
ownership abroad. Once cast upon the market, they will seek 
the idle capital of the world, and absorb it. 

The debt is an offset to the resources of the country, and 
must be deducted to their full amount from them in the calcu- 
lation of our wealth. It injures every department of wealth, 
commerce, manufactures, agriculture and navigation. It with- 
draws from active business to positive idleness, all of the capital 
to the full extent of the funding system. 

THE CONVERSION OF THE BONDS INTO BANK NOTES IS THE 
DESTRUCTION OF THE RESOURCES OF THE PEOPLE. 

Not one dollar passes out of the bonds into National bank 
currency which does not cost the public nearly one hundred per 
cent, in interest on the bonds interest, on the bank notes and the 
ruinous premium paid upon the depreciated currency with which 
they bought their bonds, besides the extravagant bonus which 



CHIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 217 

was o-iven as an iiKluceinent to purchase them. Every bond- 
holder realizes this amount of money for his bonds. Against 
such profits in investment there can be no successful competition. 
Eailroads cannot be built. How is it possible for them to offer 
an equivalent security to these bonds ? Commerce is checked, 
because the bonds are proof against shipwreck ; and who can in- 
vest in the legitimate trade of the ocean against such odds. The 
"NYestern people cannot hope for the usual improvement of their 
lands, because no investment in improvements can justify the pay- 
ment of more than six per c.mt., and scarcely that amount can be 
realized in agricultural pursuits with the entire destruction of 
our exports and commerce, and a most extraordinary increase of 
our current government expenses. Our standing army is quad- 
rupled. The expenses of each soldier is twice as much as for- 
merly. The clerical force of every department is more than 
duplicated. This is the financial condition of the country and a 
fair exhibit of its resources and capacity to liquidate its debt. It 
is a most notable fact, that during the administration of Mr. 
Buchanan, the chief tangible accusation against him, was the 
extravagance with which he administered the government and 
the exceeding great difficulty with which the money was raised, 
and that he left the treasury empty at the end of his term. 

Mr. Buchanan left the country free from debt, in the most 
healthy industrial condition ; the people not only in comfortable, 
Ijut in affluent circumstances. Such is the contrast. 

THE WEALTH OF THE COUXTEY. 

What has been added to the productive wealth of the country 
to meet the additional expenditures ? It may be safely assumed 
that no one branch of industry has been increased in the last five 
years, except that used or destroyed in the military service, con- 
sisting of arms, ammunition, artillery, &c. 

We HAVE LOST WITHOUT ANY COMPENSATION WHATEVER. 

2,600,000 able-bodied men were taken from actual produc- 
tive business ; from the plough, the loom, the anvil and build- 
ings of the country, whose daily labor added millions to the 
stock of American capital. 

The horses, mules, cattle, sheep, hogs, wagons, gears, neces- 



218 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

sary to the support of such armies during four years of uninter- 
rupted and constantly augmenting warfare, the entire value of 
Avhich has been scarcely less than $5,000,000,000, which may be 
added to the calculation, but does not present the full extent of 
the loss we suffer. 

No nation or man has ever trampled with impunity upon the 
clearly written law of God, or the well-defined rights of man, 
without answering directly for his crime. 

The law of God is a crystal mirror wdiich reflects back upon 
the soul of every rational being, the exact character of the mo- 
tives of his heart and the action of his life. No man, nation nor 
age, ever committed a crime or perpetrated an enormity, v/hich 
did not fling its monstrous image back upon its guilty perpetra- 
tor. Nor have we escaped in either morals or finances, this 
clearly marked law of the living God. When Sheridan's high- 
waymen carried the torch through Virginia, and the hordes of 
Sherman's incendiaries were turned loose upon the defenceless 
people of Georgia, the United States were the sufferers. The 
cotton-fields destroyed made our corn-fields worthless and the 
very same communities which sent armies to burn cotton-fields, 
had to burn their corn-fields for fuel. 

The poor man in the army burned the clothes of his family, 
under the delusion that he was impoverishing the cotton planters, 
and did not discover his mistake until he returned from the war 
and found that the cotton goods which he used to buy for ten 
cents, now cost him fifty. He was wild with excitement over the 
fires that swept down the sugar-house, and never dreamed of his 
own suffering, until his children were crying for syrups which lie 
could not buy. 

Such has been the complete work of destruction and the entire 
mutilation of our available resources that nearly every article 
which secured to us the balance of trade abroad, hemp, cotton, 
rice, sugar and tobacco, with tar, resin and turpentine, was des- 
troyed by our own hands, and our resources cut off by our own 
folly. 

THE PROCESS OF EXHAUSTION. 

The cotton plant supplied the people with its fibre for clothing. 
The regular supply of this staple was bought by the people of 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 219 

the North and "West, and paid for by the products of their cattle, 
horses, hogs, slieep and agriculture. 

When the Southern States ceased to produce cotton, the 
Northern people had to rely upon the production of wool. The 
ancient habits of the American Revolution were revived in the 
Southern States. Women went to the loom and the spinning- 
wheel, and every thriving household became a primitive manufac- 
tory. 

In the Northern States woolen manufactories of great extent 
were kept in operation, and the demand for wool became ab- 
sorbant. In less than four years, the whole agricultural aspect 
of the country was changed. 

Sheep took the place of horses and cattle in the mountain dis- 
tricts, and supplanted the culture of swine in the Western States, 
until horses commanded the most extravagant prices, and neat 
cattle sold at the former prices for hogs, and a single hog sold at 
the price formerly paid for a yoke of oxen or an ordinary horse. 
This process of depletion went on, until a famine stared the peo- 
ple in the face. The introduction of sheep into the country 
drove the cattle out, for neither cattle or horses will thrive in the 
same pasturage with sheep. During all tliis time of general 
depletion, the people believed themselves in the height of pros- 
perity. They mistook , their own debt for their own wealth, as 
though the mortgage upon their farms, created by government 
liabilities, was actual wealth. This delusion, kept up by 'the 
system of Secretary Chase, had a powerful agency in the pro- 
traction of the war, and did much to conciliate those time-serving 
statesmen who knew that ruin must follow such political econo- 
my, but hoped to indemnify themselves for all losses in the gen- 
eral plunder in which they might share. 

In addition to the men in military life, the war employed 
quite three millions of producers out of a population of twenty 
millions. The labor and wages of this vast army of men would 
have built railroads as a net-work in the States from which they 
were dragged away. Their idleness would have been a calamity, 
a severe blow, from which it would require a great State an age 
to recover. If these men had been idle, our ships of war safely 
anchored, and our costly armaments scattered to the winds, the 



220 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

loss would have been comparatively small ; but added to tins was 
the loss to the whole country of tlie labor of nearly one million 
of men during the same period. The cost of tiieir arms, ammu- 
nition, artillery, clothing and all incidental expenses to defend 
against this invasion of the vast army arrayed in the North, by 
both sea and land, added to the entire destruction of the exports 
of cotton, rice, tobacco, sugar, molasses and everything grown and 
exported in the Confederate States. The daily occurring losses 
from idle men and idle lands, with the daily accruing expenses 
of military rule, are increasing these losses and impairing our 
power to recuperate our exhaustive system. 

WHAT THE SOUTH HAS LOST. 

Matthew F. Maury, who, at the commencement of the rebel- 
lion, was in charge of the National Observatory in Washing- 
ton, has written a three column letter to the London Morning 
Herald, in which he gives the following estimate of the losses 
of the Soutli caused by the war : 

" I estimate the amount of the pecuniary losses incurred by 
the people of the Southern Confederacy, in their late attempt at 
independence, to be not less than $7,000,000,000 (seven thousand 
millions of dollars) viz : 

By emancipation ." $3,000,000,000 

Expenses of the war 2,000,000,000 

Destruction of private property 1,000,000,000 

Additional taxation imposed by tlie victor for 
payment of Federal' Avar debt, say $10,- 
000,000 per annum, equal to interest on... 1,000,000,000 

Total $7,000,000,000 

This loss falls upon less tlian eight millions of whites, who 
have, moreover, in addition, to contribute largely to the support 
of the four millions of blacks who have been suddenly turned 
loose among them, and who, for the present at least, are incapa- 
ble of caring for themselves. 

This $7,000,000,000 of money was the accumulated wealth 
of centuries; it constituted nearly the whole industrial plan and 
capital of the South. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 221 



THE DEBT COULD NOT BE PAID IF IT WERE JUST AND 
DESIRABLE TO PAY IT. 

1. The experience of the world has been that no people have 
been able to lay up anything above their current expenses, and 
such repairs and improvements as the increase of population and 
the accumulating demands of society render necessary. 

2. That the increase of population of every country brings 
with it a pro rata diminution of wealth per capita. 

3. That every generation of people are better able to pay the 
debts of their own creation than the generations which succeed 
them. 

4. That the growing age of every country carries with it more 
than an equal growth of expenditures, and to that extent inca- 
pacitates it to pay the debts of its own creation, and makes the 
payment of prior debts impossible. 

5. This has always been the condition of society and will con- 
tinue to be. 

6. Each generation will have its wars and consequent expen- 
ses, and cannot, nor ought not to bear the expenses of wars of pre- 
ceding generations. 

There are three ways of disposing of such a debt, each of 
Avhich has its conveniences. 

1. By repudiating the obligations of the debt entirely, which 
would bring the burden of the evil upon the rich, who have 
hoarded their means and invested them in government credits. 

2. By funding the debt and paying the interest on it after the 
manner of British debt. This impoverishes the poor and places 
them where the British have left their poor, in perpetual servi- 
tude. The funding system has been elsewhere examined ; or 

3. By abolishing the funding system and banking system 
built upon it, freeing the people from its onerous burdens and 
in its stead issuing certificates, entitling the holder to such share 
pro rata, as he may be entitled to upon a final settlement, in 
which the public lands or a part of them, may be hypothecated 
for th*^ redemption of these certificates. 

The liberty of the people demands an immediate abolition of 
the whole funding:; system. 



222 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Constitutional Amendments cannot enforce the Payment of such a 

Debt. 

The payment of all public debts, whether of bonds 
OR otherwise, is dependant entirely upon the will of 
each successive Congress, which may or may not appro- 
priate MONIES OR LEVY TAXES TO MEET THE PAYMENT OF 
INTEREST OR TAXATION. 

The bond may be just; the debt made out in due form ; the 
case may go before the general court of claims, and be adjudged 
as binding, but Congress may decline appropriations to pay the 
debt. Who can or will force Congress ? What mandamus can 
force them to levy taxes ? Even a State cannot be sued on her 
bonds, or levies of execution be made upon her property by the 
liighest courts of the country. 

But who elect the Congress of the United States? The 
people — the debtors, who are bounden in their property and in 
their labor by this mortgage; who will every day feel it the 
more with the increasing debt and advancing time. 

Constitutional amendments would not give more 
permanent security to the ultimate payment of the 
bonds, nor would an oath taken to keep the con- 
stitution make the bonds more valid, or repudiation 
less certain. 

W^hat provision of the Constitution waa ever more sacred to 
personal liberty, national character, and the distinction of race, 
than the great writ of riglit to Anglo-Americans. 

It came down to us hallowed by the benedictions of all that 
was great, learned, noble and illustrious, in English literature, 
law, blood and valor. The purest Anglo-Saxon blood had 
stained the execution-block in atonement of its violation. In 



CRIMES OF TPIE CIVIL WAR. 223 

tlie church, it was part of the religion of the cstablislinient, 
which had saved deans, prebendaries, and prelates from persecu- 
tion, disgrace and death ; dukes and earls, who found their no- 
bility too feeble to protect their persons against violence, and 
their characters from infamy, fled for refuge, to lay hold upon 
the hojie M'hich was set before them in the writ of habeas cor- 
pus. The poorest vagabond upon English soil inherited this 
protection as he did the pure breeze of the ocean, which mingled 
with the first breath that he drew. To Americans, it was older 
and more sacred than the Constitution, which came not to 
abridge, but to secure more perfectly the rights of man contract- 
ed by monarchy. Yet notwithstanding these safeguards of lib- 
erty, secured by the fire kindled on its hallowed altars, and 
flaming around its adamantine walls, the habeas corpus is 
no longer an American writ, secured to the citizens of the United 
States by law. 

The essential liberties of man, the apparently unapproacha- 
ble character of his safeguard, the sanction of the highest 
courts, nor the solemn oaths daily repeated by public ofticers, 
from the President downward, offers not the least security to the 
citizen, or lends efficiency to habeas corpus. 

The Constitution itself has been avowedly but the servant of 
necessity, to be laid away at any time, or to be used only as a 
pretext for making war upon everything and everybody who 
become obnoxious to those in power; or stood in the way of some 
favorite scheme of usurpation or plunder. After six years' ex- 
perience of daily recurring crime and suffering, from the absence 
of a government to protect the people, it is the wildest folly and 
most alarming madness to calculate upon constitutional guaran- 
ties to enforce an odious and, each day growing more obnoxious, 
debt. The wisdom of the hope of the ultimate payment of this 
debt, is not greatly enhanced by the recollection of the succes- 
sive rejiudiations which have marked each month of the passino- 
four years of blood and crime, bankruptcy and ruin. 

It is an excusable episode in this chapter to allude to the ab- 
surdity which brings forth daily amendments to the Constitution 
just when the existing organic law seems to oi^erate with binding 
force upon nobody, and to improve the system of oaths and im- 



224 CKIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

provise new ones at a time wlien the most solemn oaths are ridi- 
culed as a farce, and perjury enters into the very essence of the 
political party organizations of the ruling power of the country. 

It is but fair dealing with the bondholders, to honestly warn 
them that their securities are held by the most uncertain of all 
tenures, the never changing popular will of a country in a period 
of stormy revolution not yet concluded, the ultimate direction of 
which is unfathomable as chaos and uncertain as the trade winds. 

The spirit of the age has grown against the col- 
lection OF debts by force. Imprisonment for debt has 
been abolished in the country, and the repeal of all laws for the 
collection of debts, has been ably urged by eminent philanthro- 
pists and statesmen of accredited ability. 

Homestead laws and laws of exemption of property, real and 
personal, from execution, exhibit the true idea of popular senti- 
ment and opinion, upon the payment of debts which virtually 
enslave the people. 

An amendment to the Constitution will be practically void, de- 
claring that the validity of the public debt of the Uni- 
ted States, authorized by law, including debts incur- 
red for payment of pensions and bounties for service 
in suppressing insurrection or rebellon, shall not 

BE questioned. 

This proposed amendment adds no new binding legal force to 
the old provisions of the Federal Constitution, but opens up 
many new questions for the future adjudications of courts, which 
add nothing to the security of the bondholders but imperil their 
claims. 

It will be impossible to establish the fact of either rebellion or 
insurrection in the United States, where the parties were recog- 
nized as belligerants by the home and foreign powers, and the 
SOVEREIGN and independent existence of the States was the cor- 
ner-stone of the Union. 

These questions once raised, will be discussed with a practical 
view, and the entire change of interests involved will carry with 
it the change of opinions. Then the beautiful combination of 
potential words will be quite non-efficient to secure the payment 
of the bonds. It is upon the fickle goddess of public opinion 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 225 

that these bonds must rely for redemption and ultimate payment. 
The same public opinion which poisoned Socrates for teaching 
atheism to the youth of Athens, and then worshipped him as a 
god ; the very same which " cried crucify him, and release unto 
us Barabbas" ; that followed Robespierre through his triumphal 
march of blood and crime, cheering him with loud hosannas on 
the way, and executing him at the finale of his career, is that 
which makes and unmakes man and empires in the same breath ; 
the bonds, if redeemed at all, must be paid by appropriations 
from the public treasury. Appropriations must be raised by 
taxes levied by Congress, and Congress is elected by the people. 
These two questions recur with amazing force to the mind : 

1st. By what power will you force Congress to legislate appro- 
priations for the payment of a debt which they determine not 
to pay ? 

2d. How will you force the people to elect a Congress favor- 
able to the payment of such a debt, if they are determined not 
to do it ? 

When the terrible issue comes upon the people, the conflict 
between the unyielding pressure of debt and taxation and the 
evanescent fumes of party spirits, every minor objection will 
be met at the threshold. 

The Constitutional Amendment is the worst, and for the bond- 
holder, the most unreliable of all his hopes. Experience has 
taught, at the most terrible rates of tuition, to the unhappy people 
of America, that Constitutional provisions have failed to re- 
strain the most aggravated violation of its own reserved powers, 
and for the purpose of enforcing positive obligations, has been 
entirely inoperative. Only one instance need be cited in illus- 
tration of this argument : 

he duty of Congress to establish uniform laws upon the sub- 
, of bankruptcy throughout the United States, which to this 
, with all of the combined influence of business working in 
,favor, has not been permanently done, though several times 
!mpted. 



15 



226 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

No ONE Generation can Bind its Successors to pay its Debts. 

By what eight can any one generation contract to 

ENSLAVE successive GENERATIONS, AND MORTGAGE THE LA- 
BOR OF FUTURE CENTURIES, TO PAY A DEBT CREATED TO SA- 
TIATE HATE AND AGGRANDIZE A LAWLESS CUPIDITY ? 

All just debts are based upon mutual honor and mutual ben- 
efit; upon the quid pro quo; but the very essence of the 
contract is that both parties are capable of contracting, and give 
a rational assent to the obligations which bind them. 

What is a debt ? " Any kind of a just demand." {Bouvier 
Dictionary.) It is that obligation which one person may volun- 
tarily lay himself under to another to be computed by the stand- 
ards of value then in vogue. 

The voluntary repudiation of a just debt is no less a crime 
than the robbery of honest creditors by any other means of fraud 
or force. 

A contract cannot be voluntary or of binding obligation upon 
the next genaration, which has been entered into by this gener- 
ation. It is impossible ; the contract had no consent of the party 
upon whom the obligation falls. 

To this rule, founded in justice, there can be no variations, 
except in the following cases : 

1st. AVhen a debt shall have been contracted for the erection 
of some public improvement necessary to the permanent admin- 
istration of justice, or the maintenance of law among the people, 
such as court houses, jails, &c. 

2d. A canal dug or railroad built at the public expense, fas- 
tened upon the property of the country, inures to the benefit of 
posterity, and is the representative to future generations of the 
energy, industry, genius and enterprize of their ancestry. But 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 227 

the most magcnificcnt monuments ever reared to the honor of 
human genius and mechanical skill, have been justly accounted 
too costly for the endorsement and redemption of future genera- 
tions. But in all such cases the creditors may have justly no 
other security for the payment of what may remain due upon it, 
than that which is aiforded in the value, use, and profits of the 
public improvement itself. 

This maxim must hold good in all just governments. A 
contract made by past generations cannot even bind the honor of 
the present generation, who may have declared against the justice 
of the act for which the debt has been contracted. It may have 
been a vision or a whim, in which the persons engaged by contract 
robbed the public. It may have been unjust or unnecessary. 

What is true in the private affairs of men must be true of 
their public matters, since the public is but the aggregate of the 
private. If a banker builds a great house for his business, or a 
miller establishes his mill at great expense and involves a debt, 
which he is unable to liquidate, no one dreams of entailing this 
debt upon his children, although his estate should pay but a 
trifling portion of the encujnbrance which passes away with his 
property. The son can, in no sense, be responsible, because he had 
no voice in the contract ; and elects to waive his rights in the in- 
heritance, and is under no obligation to consider the action of 
his father as binding upon his honor or conscience. This is 
the law of every free country; freedom demands this much, 
otherwise the son would be a slave to the improvidence of the 
father. A very few generations would create caste in society, 
that would make slavery absolute, which time could not efface 
without revolution. 

What may not be done by the individual, may not justly be 
done by the government. 

The golden rule, " whatsoever ye would have men do unt6 
you, do ye even so unto them," was given for nations as well as 
for men, and is alike obligatory upon both. There is no appli- 
cation of the principle that "all just powers of government are 
derived from the consent of the governed," more forcible or just 
than to that of taxation. 

No ONE GENERATION OF MEN HAVE THE RIGHT OF CONTRACT, 



228 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

OR CAN BIND THE SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS TO PAY A DEBT 
CONTRACTED TO JMAINTAIN ANY RELIGIOUS OR POLITICAL 
PARTY, OR ANY SYSTEM OF RELIGION AND POLITICS. 

1. Every system of government is comparatively good or evil, 
as it expresses the wishes of the people, who are the source of 
just power; or as it conforms or disagrees with those funda- 
mental self-evident rights of man which are elevated above the 
legitimate reach of legislation, and the violation of which is an 
unpardonable trespass upon the prerogative of human nature. 

2. Each generation for itself has the right to make, alter, 
amend, or conform the existing systems to its will, is under per- 
sonal obligations to pay all of the expenses incident to and con- 
sequent upon the conduct or change of the government. 

The reasons for this are two-fold and apparent. First, they 
are the only persons interested in the change, for if the generation 
which preceded us, are not competent judges of the laws for this 
generation, how is it possible for us to be infallible arbiters of 
the opinions of the next generation ? and by what right do they 
assume to mortgage their soul, understanding and conscience, to 
particular doctrines in advance, and jnortgage their labor to the 
heirs of bondholders in all future time. The principle is not 
only absurd and dangerous, but it is the most complete system 
of slavery imaginable, by which each generation in advance of 
its birth, is assigned to labor ; the kind, amount, when, where 
and how, beforehand — to pay the expense of the riot, profligacy, 
debauchery of thieving contractors, loathesome prostitutes, and 
effeminate military officers. The immediate offspring of the 
shavers, usurers, extortioners and misers, who grew fat upon the. 
blood of the sires, the grief of their mothers and the destitution 
of themselves, now doomed to perpetual taxation. 

The second reason is even stronger than the first. It is the 
duty of every man to pay for what he receives. This is the 
touchstone of honesty itself, that he does it willingly. Then they 
who work a violent revolution are, by common consent, the only 
ones benefited by it; they are under obligations to defray its 
expenses, and immediate levies of tax as the revolution transpires, 
is the only legitimate mode of paying it. 

The old maxim, " in times of peace prepare for war," was the 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



229 



fixed law of governments among our fathers, and each generation 
transmitted to its successor a treasury filled with money, as the 
means of carrying on wars in national defence, which was often 
diverted to the purpose of civil wars and squandered in the en- 
slavement and degradation of the people. 

But in such a war as that which has just closed, payment of 
the debt resolves itself into two very plain questions. 1. If it has 
been a blessing to the people or a public benefit, then those re- 
ceiving the benefit ought not to hesitate cheerfully to bear the ex- 
penses ; much i^ore, they ought to forgive the indebtedness in- 
curred as held by them in notes or bonds. 

2. But if the revolution is a great public curse, and has de- 
stroyed all that is sacred in principle and desirable in property, 
how wicked a crime must it be against natural justice to ask an 
injured people to pay a debt consequent upon a contract, forced 
upon them to consummate their own degradation, slavery and 
utter ruin. 

NO DEBT INCITRRED BY A WAR OF ANY KIND CAN POSSIBLY 
BIND THE SUCCEEDING GENERATION. 

1st. They have not consented to it, which is the essence of the 
contract, and without which, the parties held obliged to pay, are 
in the very same condition of the traveller met by the highway- 
men, who cry, " Stand and deliver " — " Your money or your 
life." It is the application of force purely as a means of taking 
and applying property. 

2nd. The war which may seem just to the fathers, may seem 
unjust to the children, and the children may contract a debt 
equal to that contracted by the fathers fOr the purpose of sub- 
verting the very system established by them, and leave a double 
debt upon the grandchildren, who disagree with both the fiither 
and grandfather, and believe that both wars were unnecessary, 
unjust, cruel and disgraceful, and that their causes might have 
been readily removed by the slightest forbearance and the sim- 
plest appeal to reason. 

3d. If the claims upon which a transmitted debt are based be 
the self-sacrifice of those who contracted it, then let it be verified 
by the sacrifice ; for if the debt is transmitted, there has been no 



230 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

equal sacrifice. It is a sacrifice of the lives of the poor, but not 
of the wealth of the rich. If it were just and necessary that the 
poor people, who always fight the battles of a country, should 
sacrifice their lives, how much greater the necessity that the rich 
should sacrifice their property in a common cause. But how very 
unjust is it that the property and labor of the surviving soldiers 
and their children, in all time to come, should be held in perpet- 
ual mortgage to pay the debt and accruing interest to those who 
made merchandise of the blood and treasures of their comrades 
and parents. These reasons are not only just, Ijut they are con- 
clusive against the entailment of such debt upon posterity. 

This is THE CHIEF CORNER-STONE of our government, that 
there can be no hereditary rulers, either of kings or nobility, 
transmitted from one generation to another; neither by succes- 
sion nor ajipointment by birth or condition. 

The second great principle and corollary of the first, is, that 
no one generation has the power to bind an organic law irrevo- 
cably upon a succeeding generation, any more tlian kings have 
the right to appoint successors, or the people may be governed 
by the laws of royal descent. The third great principle and 
corollary of the first and second is, that there is no just power in 
any one generation to mortgage the labor of a succeeding gen- 
eration, without transmitting the means of payment ; and then it 
is purely oj^tional with the succeeding generations, whether they 
will accept the conditions upon which it is done. The debt is 
represented as " a first mortgage upon the ■property of the United 
States" but it is rather a bill of credit drawn upon the prosper- 
ity of the people, which they will repudiate and send to protest 
in eternity. 

The power to create and transmit such a debt is a most terri- 
ble revival of the old hard-hearted Jewish doctrine, that " The 
father ate sour grapes and put the cliildren's teeth on edge." 

We are met with the philanthropic argument, that the debt was 
a contract to give to the country liberty. This is impossi- 
ble. For the very taxation necessary to jDay the interest on 
the debt, is itself a slavery intolerable and insupportable, 
from which the people will be forced to fly to strange lands and 
seek refuge in perpetual alienage; or, as the alternative de- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 231 

maiul, rc})iKliatiou of both principal and interest as the only re- 
maining remedy. 

The great idea upon which the late civil war was waged, was 
that no one man may enslave his cotemporary under any pre- 
tence whatever. It is the acme of the triumph claimed by its 
friends and instigators, that this great question was settled by 
the force of arms and sealed with the richest blood of a whole 
generation of civilized men, that innocent involuntary servitude 
shall find no legal tolerance among us. 

But what a fatal conclusion to this argument is it that we may 
transmit slavery and unrequited obligations to be exacted by un- 
born generations from each other, through the funding system. 
Sifted of their sophistry, the arguments used to extenuate the 
crime of transmitting mortgages to posterity, would as well 
apologize for the transmission of scrofula, consumption or other 
diseases. Carried to its legitimate results, the present system 
assumes that the jirofligacy of each generation may mortgage 
the prosperity and labor of all generations succeeding it, until 
the full value of the property is exhausted, the labor absorbed 
in advance, and capital as effectually own labor as the grazier 
owns the bullock, or the mule only, awaiting the time when age 
will consign them to the collar and the yoke. Deducting food, 
raiment and shelter, the owner pockets the earnings of the poor 
very much in the same manner. 



232 CEIMES OF THE C1\'IL WAR. 



CHAPTER IX. 

The Duty of the Friends of Peace to Repudiate War Debts. 

All wars of modern times Lave been under the control 
of capitalists. In Europe, the moneyed kings dictate terms to 
their political sovereigns, control wars and make peace. In 
America, the bankers contrived the late civil war. It was quite 
as much a scheme of money as of policy. AYar would not have 
been created if the banks had refused to engage in it. It could 
not have been carried on, if the capital of the country had man- 
fully opposed it. 

The liberty of the people, the peace of the world and material 
prosperity of tlie poor would have been undisturbed, and even 
the condition of the negroes would have been better than now, 
but for these men. 

The capitalists and stock-gamblers in Europe, by their alliance 
with the political adventurers of America, carefully planned this 
war, in the interest of despotism and the funding systems. They 
anticipated every argument and prepared the public mind for 
war in advance. During the war they prepared for the debt and 
continued the war, that the debt might reach its present enormous 
extent. 

These gamesters upon human life and public misfortune, have 
fattened upon the bloody conflicts of emperors and kings, and 
inherit fortunes coined out of the most frightful battles of mod- 
ern times. Austria, France, Prussia and England have been fet- 
tered by the mortgages entailed by these brokers, upon their prop- 
erty and industry. 

Such is the perfection of the conspiracy against the property 
of the world, entered into by these stock gamblers, that war is 
always precipitated upon a particular country, whenever it is be- 
lieved to be ripe for revolution or fat enough to enrich the money 
trade. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 283 

For the puqiose of creating civil war, destroying the agricul- 
ture of the South, entailing a debt upon the people and, if possi- 
ble, the utter destruction of Republican government in the 
United States, English emissaries were, by the monied interests 
of Europe, under religious guise, sent to America to stir up civil 
war. Pamphleteers added their wicked labors to the work. Sum- 
ner's celebrated visit to Europe was in the same general interest, 
and Avhen Gen. James Shields of the United States army, had 
left the valley of the Shenandoah, Sumner assured him that he 
loas glad that the rebels were not entirely defeated, because his 
great object would not be accomplished if they were. The de- 
struction of our prosperity, the ultimatum of the stock gamblers, 
had not been reached. The raid of John Brown and the parti- 
zan conflicts, were but incidents in the grand purpose to create 
war and base a funding system upon it. 

Such has been the unbroken success of the professional mis- 
chief-makers of the world, that they have succeeded in Europe 
for a full half century, in fastening ruin and bankruptcy upon 
every sovereignty which w^as directed by their counsels or fell 
into their grasp. 

Bonaparte eluded their machinations ; this only provoked their 
wrath and drove them to the combinations which culminated at 
"Waterloo, in the destruction of his empire and liberty. 

The Mexican war was the first game played by the American 
stockbrokers, upon which the general peace of the Western Hem- 
isphere was staked and lost. The late civil war has been a suc- 
cess, and if the stakes are delivered up by the ruined people to 
the stockgamblers, permanent peace in the United States is gone 
forever. 

The successes have emboldened the stockbrokers, and given 
them possession of every avenue to popular favor and power. 
The pulpit, the press and the army, have been used as their in- 
strument, to secure their prize in the blood market of the world. 
These instruments of popular favor speak of war as the only 
means of government to be used upon every occasion to gratify 
spites, to punish indignities, or secure plunder. Unless this 
spirit be arrested promptly, our peace is imperilled and will be 
destroyed. 



234 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

There is only one way to counteract this wicked spirit ; and 
that is, to give notice to the world that debts contracted in such 
an enterprize, bind no one and cannot be collected. If it be 
Avicked to engage in wars, it is also unjust to pay money to carry 
on wars ; but if it be unjust to carry on wars by ready money, 
how much more atrocious to carry them on by anticipating the 
credit of generations. It is the duty of all sincere peace men to 
make a demonstration against this usurpation ; and let it be un- 
derstood that no debt made on the interest of a war of premedi- 
tated plunder, can be enforced upon a free people, or be sanc- 
tioned by the friends of peace. 

There is an Equity, which, in all public affairs, looks to the pur- 
poses, the mode and the application of monies in the creation of 
debts, when debts have been created in fraud, for purposes of cor- 
ruption, and the parties issuing evidences of debt were jxirticeps 
criminis and beneficiaries, then the question goes back to the 
legislatures, which must levy taxes before they can be collected. 
The new legislature must be elected by the peoj^le. The people 
of no country hasten to pay debts known to be fradulent or un- 
just. Against the indiscriminate payment of no debt ever con- 
tracted, has there been so many conclusive arguments for utter 
repudiation as the debt now claimed by the foreign capitalists 
and domestic speculators, holding bonds and certificates of in- 
debtedness against the United States, as the basis of a perpetual 
system of gambling upon the labor and commerce of the 
country. 

The objectors and objections are susceptible of a clear and 
easy classification, and when carefully embodied, embrace all of 
the elements of good government. 

1. Every consistent friend of peace must oppose the 
payment of the debt. 

If it be wrong to engage in a ■\var of unparalleled cruelty and 
horror, it cannot be right to compensate the worst participants 
in it ; men whose business is to inflame wars, to fatten upon the 
blood of the innocent, and hoard up the treasure gained by the 
slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings, hurried 
into the presence of God without thought or preparation. 

\yiiat care these men — the brokers in immortal souls — for 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 235 

the burning of cities, barns, mills, <and the desolation of whole 
regions of cultivated lauds ; with the food and raiment of de- 
crepid old men, feeble women, and helpless children ; the razing 
of churches and desecration of cemeteries ? 

Experience for the last three centuries demonstrates that the 
capitalists of the world hold the peace and the destiny of nations 
in their hands ; they create war and make peace. The supersti- 
tions of religion and the malignity of politics, are under the 
mercenary control of capital. The payment of this debt is a 
test question of civilization, which the gamblers in public stocks, 
watch with an intense interest, that Christians might well emu- 
late in the propagation of the gospel. 

Wars in Europe have placed her mercenary bankers in prince- 
ly opulence. They furnish the sinews of war, and command 
peace whenever they have sufficiently involved the imperial 
powers to secure an increase of annuities, and kings quiescently 
yield to their behests. 

These kingly brokers watch the probabilities of war with the 
same keen scent that vultures follow the camp of moving armies, 
to fatten on the offal. Such has been their success and sagacity, 
that whilst kings exercise arbitrary power over the lives and 
liberties of their subjects, by war and conscription, these bankers 
divide the regal power by subsidizing the labor of the subjects 
of kings in advance, absorbing it in taxations levied at their dic- 
tation; purchasing kings, bribing judges, suborning witnesses, 
entering into partnerships with legislatures, commissioning mili- 
tary officers, and hiring standing armies to stamp out the liber- 
ties of the people, who are forced to support all of these by tax- 
ation. 

The United States have laid the foundation for just such a 
comprehensive system of monied oligarchy. There is now 
thrust into our faces the frightful picture, by every newspaper 
under the control of capital, predictions of war, and clamoring 
"for blood as the remedy for every trivial evil, that adventurers 
may reap a rich harvest from the vices of the wicked, the follies 
of the weak, and the general profligacy of society. Such is the 
spirit of fanaticism, and the maddened temper of bad men as- 
piring to power, that all argument is ridiculed, except that which 



236 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL AVAE. 

opens up a new field of plunder, or draws new victims into the 
net of tlieir insatiate lust of gain. 

If such men succeed in funding and consolidating the public 
debt made during the war, they have established a precedent 
which will assure them the power to incite a war at any time 
hereafter, when whim, interest or bad feeling may indicate 
either its profit or necessity. A strict and rigid settlement, ac- 
cording to the equities of eternal justice, is the only remedy for 
the great evil ujjon us. This is the clearest and most direct way 
to teach these gentlemen what they may not do, although they 
inflame the vilest passions of human nature into war ; yet they 
must be taught that they cannot control the public conscience to 
enslave itself, and enforce perpetual bondage upon a people born 
free ; that they cannot safely create and carry on wars, wicked 
and destructive in themselves, which might be averted, but for the 
persistent chicanery of capital, which uses all of the well known 
arts of diplomacy to involve the people in civil war ; which, 
failing in every other means to precipitate their revolutionary 
ends upon the country, connive at war, eschew compromise, and 
mob and murder the friends of peace. 

The only hope of jjeace is in the destruction of the prosperity 
of mercenaries engaged in provoking civil wars. He is neither 
an intelligent nor a true friend of peace, who will not boldly 
repudiate every illegal, fraudulent and vicious claim against the 
labor of the people to satiate the venality of capital, fattened on 
blood. 

This styleof mortgaging labor in anticipated taxation is a wicked 
device of modern times, to carry on wars of conquest, wars of sub- 
jugation, wars for plunder and wars to feed the malignity of bad 
men. It has never been successfully carried out to ensure more 
than annually accruing interest on the debt, and then only at 
i-educed rates, and when it could be made the ministering servant 
of a system of aristocracy and overbearing power. Let it be an 
avowed article of American faith, that no Avar of money, no war 
for money can be successfully prosecuted and carried on under 
the auspices of a free people ; henceforth capitalists will have 
neither the will or poAver to invoh^e a peaceful people in uni- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 237 

versal carnage. Such has been the work of Avar upon onr 
social system, sought to be ratiified by the sanction of the people 
in the submission to this debt, that it binds us hand and foot 
and adds to war slavery, to slavery all of its concomitant degra- 
dation. 



238 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER X 

A Plan for the Payment of the Public Debt. 

I. Let the government pay to the holders of all the different 
kinds of bonds, government certificates to the full amount of 
their face. 

II. Let the national banks be compelled at once to surrender 
their bonds and redeem their national bank notes with these 
treasury notes or certificates, and abolish the whole national bank- 
ing system, appointing receivers to compel them to go into liqui- 
dation. 

III. At once reestablish the sub-treasury system for the safe 
keeping of the government monies. 

IV. Restore in its full force the specie basis of our currency 
according to the Constitution, to all contracts entered into after 
the year 1867 ; but for the protection of the business of the 
country, let all debts created from the institution of the so-called 
legal-tender, as a currency, until the restoration of the gold and 
silver basis, be paid in these government certificates, not because 
they are a legal-tender, but because a vicious legislation misled 
the people and drove them into the use of this paper money. 

V. Let parties, by contract, take these certificates as they would 
any other article of commodity by special agreement. 

VI. Let these certificates be liable to execution as any other 
personal property, for all debts contracted after the restoration of 
the constitutional legal-tender; then let them be sold to the 
highest bidder for gold and silver. 

VII. Private banking can be carried on then as now, upon 
the personal responsibility of the bankers, like all other business, 
upon the personal liability and capacity and integrity of the in- 
dividuals, without loaning the aid of the government to enrich 
the banks or defraud the people. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 239 

VIII. Let the government lift these certificates in payment 
of duties, at all her ports and in payment of public lands at their 
appraised value ; but in no case to be less than the minimum 
price now paid for the railroad land and all mineral lands, at 
their actual value, in greenbacks or government certificates. 

IX. The abolition of the revenue system, with its army of 
officers, and public and private espionage, and the adoption of the 
old plan of raising revenue. 

X. Abolish all interest upon public debts of every kind. 
The above plan embodies a remedy for all of the evils of the 

fundiiig system, and must be adopted preliminary to all others. 
This is necessary to prevent a permanent coalition of "the purse 
and the sword," which are now united to absorb the labor and 
crush out the independence of the people. Until we are rid of 
the bonds and their consequent taxation, and abolish the banks 
with their consequent usury, it is useless to propose the protec- 
tion of labor against the encroachments of capital, because capital 
assumes to own labor, and labor creates the money that pays both 
taxes and interest. 

Until the abolition of the revenue system, it is quite as use- 
less to denounce tariffs, because tariffs are the legitimate children 
of funding systems, and necessary to the payment of interest on 
the debt. 

Capital is sensitive in the covetousness of her interests, and 
villainous in the exercise of her power and cowardly withal. 

Labor is cool, powerful, courageous and honest. When fairly 
aroused and completely marshaled, the laboring masses have de- 
molished the combinations of capital in every country where the 
conflict has been provoked. 

The debt is a vampire which drinks the fountains of our arte- 
rial system dry, and keeps up a financial police who hunt down 
the people through every avenue of trade to spy out their liber- 
ties. 

The above simple solution of the funded debt obliterates the 
corruption fund, which controls legislation, taints our judiciary, 
and drives on the military satraps to their Asiatic saturnalia. 
It will do more. It puts the capital of the country upon one 
general equality of employment, risk, anxiety and enterprise ; 



240 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

and gives capitalists an interest in common with the people, and 
gives the people an immunity from the encroachment of capital, 
and the esj)ionage and annoyance of government vermin. 

The plan is not premature, but actually necessary to be adopt- 
ed at once, as the only means of saving us from another coil of 
the military boa-constrictor, to crush our bones, or prevent us 
from being swallowed alive by the anaconda of the funding sys- 
tem, which lies with gaping mouth ready to receive its meal, all 
covered with slime and saliva. 

The debt is woven into a complete mesh-work that involves 
every part of the business of the country in ruin. 

The payment of the bonds in treasury notes is the only way 
to disentangle and unfold these voracious serpents, which are 
gathering its coils around the American republican system, 
to crush its bones, and mingle them with its flesh in a per- 
fect jelly, the more readily to devour it. The payment of the 
bonds by greenbacks so far simplifies this complicated question 
that it leaves the currency in the very condition in which it was 
placed by the government, unencumbered by the funding system ; 
the revenue system, which collects the interest upon the bonds ; 
the banking system, which is reared upon the funding system ; 
the tariff system, which feeds it ; the military system which will 
ultimately be employed to enforce the collection of the income 
and tariff system. 

It is just that the bondholders receive these treasury notes for 
their bonds from the people ; which is precisely the same kind of 
currency which they received for the horses, mules, wagons, 
tronsportation, rations and clothing furnished by the people to 
the government. 

The same exactly which the borrower who received gold ol 
the lender, returned in payment of his debt after years of pro- 
tracted loans and stay of execution. 

The same which liquidated soldiers' bounties and monthly pay 
— then back pay and pensions for wounded soldiers, orphan, 
and widows. 

The same which pays the physician, attorney, professor an ' 
minister of the gospel, for their skill and services. 

The same which is given in return for the labor of the mechani 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 241 

artisan and toiling multitudes, whose drooping brows respond to 
the necessities of enterprise ; w-ho construct our railroads, dig our 
canals, cultivate our soil and build our cities. 

The same Avhich has been declared by the Supreme Court as a 
legal-tender in the payment of all debts. It is not proposed in 
this chapter, to affirm or deny the validity or justice of this 
opinion, but simply to call attention to the fact. 

The treasury notes with which the bonds should be liquidated 
are as good as the legal-tender which liquidate the bank notes 
themselves. There is a necessity to pay off the bonds with 
treasury notes, for the following obvious and unanswerable con- 
siderations, namely : 

Because it is paying the bonds in the paper with which they 
were bought. 

Because it is necessary to our present freedom. 

Because it does not involve the question of the payment of the 
debt, but leaves it open. 

Because it takes idle capital untaxed from the hands of idle 
men, and engages both in active business. 



16 



242 CKIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Correspondence Between the Author and Horace Greeley, 

Sir : — In a recent issue of the Tribune, I observe the following 
epitliets applied to those who favor the liquidation by the pay- 
ment of the public debt in greenbacks, the cancellation of the 
bonds which are devouring us with interest, and the obliteration 
of tlie national banking system, which is employed in the interest 
of monopoly to crush out the liberties of the people and hoard 
the necessaries of life, and starve and freeze the poor, to enrich 
illegitimate speculation. You say that "such a proposition 
would shame any swindler that ever uttered counterfeit money 
or passed off bogus checks. No one will countenance any of 
these devices for loading debts instead of paying them, who is 
not in heart and soul a villain. Any republican or war democrat 
Avho lends them a shadow of countenance proves himself an 
ingrate, a villain, and a fool. We are quite willing to see the 
copperheads })lace themselves upon a platform of repudiation, 
for it is high time that a career of infamy should be closed in a 
death of shame." 

I confess that the above styb of argument seems not indebted 
to Bacon, Locke or Whately, for its cogency, and quite indepen- 
dent of Addison, Irving or Burke for the delicate choice of its 
language, and is indeed original and characteristic. 

In the year 1865, in a number of speeches delivered in the 
State of New Jersey, and published in a number of newspapers 
in dillt'rent jiarts of the United States, I first proposed the pay- 
ment of the bonds in greenbacks, as we were then, and are now, 
paying everything else in that kind of currency; and our courts 
were then, and are now, enforcing all private and public contracts 
upon that basis. I then did, and now do, believe that this is the 
oidy practicable, wise, just and equitable method of disposing 
of this monstrous load, which you have time and again argued 
must stint the poor in their food, raiment, fuel and shelter for 
generations to come, and of course cannot affect the rich, to 
whom it is paid. 

Notwithstanding the employment of your choice epithets, I 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 243 

hereby propose to discuss this question through the Tribune, 
aHowing me two columns of your paper every week, until the 
whole subject has fairly passed in review. Or I will meet you 
in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Louisville, Chicago, or any of the 
eastern cities, and publicly debate the questions involved in my 
lirojmsitions. If you will meet me in any of the cities indicated, 
I will, in view of your style of arguments, give you two hours, 
and will be content with one alternately. In case you should 
not except either of these propositions, I extend the invitation to 
Wendell Phillips, Senator Henry Wilson, or to your glib-tongued 
neighbor, Henry Ward Beecher. 

it may not be unkind to inform you that I am now addressing 
audiences of from three to ten thousand persons every day, com- 
posed of republicans and democrats, all of whom heartily en- 
dorse the plan, and among the number are many eminent officers 
of the late Federal army, including gentlemen of both political 
parties. I await your early reply, preliminary to arrangements 
for discussion. 

I am very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

Henry Clay Dean. 



Office of the Tribune, 
New York, Sept 8, '67. 

Mr. Dean — Sir: I have yours of the 29th ult. Should I 
ever consent to argue the propriety and policy of wholesale 
swindling, I shall take your proposal into consideration. ^I do 
not know where the cause of national villainy could find a fitter 
advocate than yourself. 

Yours, Horace Greeley. 

Henry Clay Dean, 3It. Pleasant, Iowa. 

Horace Greeley, Esq. : 

Sir : I hereby acknowledge the receipt of your polite note of 
the 8th ultimo. Though not surprised at the courteous tone and 
philosophical air of your brief epistle, I confess to a gratification 
in observing that you have added to your varied accomplish- 
ments the brilliancy of wit as an embellishment of your labored 
essays, and that you adorn your private correspondence with 
those jewels of literature which have hitherto been confined to 
the bar-room and ball-alley, which, however, you have very 
properly redeemed from their vulgar use as most singularly 
becoming the style, compass and subject matter of your teaching, 



244 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

and so happily adapted to the tastes, associations and wants of 
your political pupils and associates. 

I accept, with due appreciation, the reasons which you assign 
for your silence upon the great questions of political economy 
involved in the unfortunate condition of the country, and rather 
attribute to your modesty what you claim for your sense of 
justice. 

You will pardon me for the assurance that, however much I 
may be startled at the use of such compreliensive terms as 
"wholesale swindling" and "national villainy ;" yet this style 
of language has been so long in vogue among gentlemen of very 
moderate attainments, that it utterly fails to produce conviction 
when offered as a substitute for logic, and scarcely succeeds in 
captivating when employed as a rhetorical flourish to ornament 
unhappy conceptions of ruinous dogmas. 

Without any pretension to that astuteness requisite to reply 
to such startling propositions as are embodied in the sweeping 
denunciations of " wholesale swindling" and "national villainy," 
I charge you and the free-booters and highwaymen whom you \ 
have led in the work of Avholesale swindling and national vil- 
lainy — the burning of cities, the overthrow of States, the desola- 
tion of the most beautiful countries, the murder of the innocent, 
the supremacy of anarchy over law, of despotism over liberty, 
of capital over labor, that you are now demanding the robbery 
of the poor of the necessaries of life, that the opulent may riot 
in its luxuries. To carry out this most wicked purpose, you 
propose to mortgage the labor of the poor to the bonds of the 
rich in all time to come, and fasten a perpetual debt as a cancer 
upon the body politic. 

Upon the other hand, I propose to pay off this debt in green- 
backs, the very currency in which it was created, that the people 
may be emancipated at once. 

I assume that a sound and uniform currency is the life-blood 
of commerce, agriculture, manufactories, and civilization itself, 
to which every government must conform its business, credits 
and intercourse with other governments. 

Justice requires a uniform currency to regulate the relations 
of capital to labor, that tiie rich may not oppress the poor, nor 
the creditor consume the substance of the debtor in exchanges, 
usury and extortions. 

These qxq truisms never doubted and questions never raised 
in the United States before the inauguration of the present great 
fraud upon the labor of the country. 

Against these manifest principles of justice and sound policy 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 245 

we have under the present odious and monstrous " funding 
SYSTEM," two entirely distinct and entirely ditlercnt kinds of 
currencies — one for the poor and the other for the rich. The 
one which is imposed upon the poor will not carry him forty 
leag-ues from the shores of his own country, or be recognized in 
anv of the nations of the earth at any uniform value, or pass as 
a circulating medium in any transaction of business — which at 
home is the subject matter of every manner of bartering, and is 
shaved by the government at its counters. 

This inferior currency is the only compensation which the poor 
man receives for his labor — whieii the soldier receives for his 
services, and his widow and children inherit as the price of his 
blood — that the farmer receives for his grain, live stock, fruit, 
and lor the fee simply of the land itself. 

The old man who loaned his gold and silver to secure an in- 
come for helplessness and old age, is forced to accept treasury 
notes in payment of both interest and principal, although he may 
lose two-thirds of the entire value of his debt by the worthlessness 
of this miserable apology for money. 

The mechanic who builds houses out of materials purchased 
with gold and silver, is forced to take this paper money in pay- 
ment of the purchase, although it was promised in the precious 
metals ; and no allowance is made for the depreciation ; whilst 
all debts contracted upon a specie basis yet due and unpaid, are 
payable in this inferior currency, subject to the fluctuations of a 
drunken money market. The lawyer receives it for his fees, the 
physician for his medicines, the professor and minister for his 
salary. The poor widow who Avorks to support her orphan 
children, is forced to accept this shadow of money in payment of 
her wages ; and the poor girl who, in filial devotion, labors day 
and night, denying herself of the comforts of life to save her 
weekly pittance to bring her indigent mother from a foreign land, 
is forced to take these rag shadows of her labor and submit them 
to the mercenary discretion of the heartless broker, in the ex- 
ciiange for money recognized in the commercial ports of the 
Morld. Even your protege, the negro, is robbed of the products 
of his industry, by the worthlessness of the rags in which he is 
paid, the value of which he is not even able to decipher. 

Such is the currency created for the business and robbery of 
the poor, whose necessities forbid the possibility of their owner- 
ship of government or any other securities ; but who, in exces- 
sive taritf, stamps, increased price upon their food, raiment, fuel, 
house rents, medicines, burial expenses, and other indirect tax- 
ation, surrendered full one-half of all their labor to give an en- 



246 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

tirely different currency to a privileged class, created for the 
purpose of overthrowing our republican form of government, 
and establishing an oligarchy in imitation of the Avorst period of 
the French despotism which exonerated the nobility from taxa- 
tion. 

Gold and silver, the circulating medium of the civilized 
world, the commercial passport to business everywhere, is the 
especial property of only two classes of the American people, 
MJiose princely possessions placed them beyond the reach of want; 
who draw their substance from all other classes, who, by this 
very distinction in the two currencies, are crushed beyond the 
hope of recovery. The first class of gentlemen who are espe- 
cially cared for in this unjust and merciless wrong, or, to use your 
own delectable phraseology, " national villainy " and " wholesale 
swindliug," are the manufacturers. For their double protection, 
the tariffs, already prohibitory and ruinous to the consumer, are 
nearly doubled by the difference in exchange consequent upon 
the payment of the duties in gold and silver, which you must 
know, adds nothing to the revenue of the General Government, 
because it drives commerce from the custom-house, to the con- 
trol of the smuggler, and oppresses the consumer by adding 
these tariffs to the price of his goods, and pays fabulous amounts 
into the pockets of the British manufacturer, who smuggles his 
goods into British vessels to feed British merchantmen upon the 
vitals of American commerce. 

This evasion of the revenue laws by the smuggler, is made 
doubly remunerative by the excessive duties which are paid in 
gold. This payment of duties in gold and silver, after having 
mutually enriched the smuggler and monopolist at the expense 
of the government cheated of its dues, and the poor who are 
robbed by the duties, is then carefully husbanded as a golden 
fund for the payment of the bondholder. 

The bondholder is the second class of gentlemen who receive 
gold and silver in payment of their bonds and the accruing in- 
terest. Of these two classes you are the especial champion. 

There can be no possible reason, founded injustice, why the 
bondholder should be paid either the principal or interest of his 
debt in any other currency than that which by law is declared a 
legal-tender in payment of all other debts. 

The greenbacks either are or they are not a legal-tender in the 
payment of debts. If they are not a legal-tender in the payment 
of debts, then the Congress which so enacted, the courts which 
sustain the enactments, and the party which enforced this legis- 
lation at the point of the bayonet, have by legislative usurpation. 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 247 

judicial corruption, and arbitrary power, committed a crime upon 
the laboring poor for the benefit of the idle rich, for which 
" whohisale swindling" and "national villainy " are terms of 
but faint expression. In this legislation you and your ilk have 
re})udiated a large proportion of the debts due between man and 
man in the ordinary business of the country, and have begotten 
a system of "swindling" compared with which wild-cat banks, 
INIississippi poker and the faro gamblers are genteel and honest. 
Nor does it add anything to your honor, or mitigate your crime, 
that this "swindling" and "villainy" of yours was soaked in the 
best blood of the land, out of which you have coined the gold, 
accruing interest and the bonds which bear it, which has meta- 
morphosed you from plain Horace Greeley, the printer, into his 
Lordship, Hon. Horace Greeley, the bondholder — from the de- 
fender of the negro slave into the oppressor of the white free 
man. 

But if these treasury notes are a legal-tender, then the govern- 
ment cannot refuse to take its own paper in payment of its own 
debts; and there can be no apology, founded injustice, for the 
demand of any other currency than greenbacks in the payment 
of duties or any other debt due the government. 

The same reasons make it obligatory upon the bondholder to 
take this money in payment of his accruing interest, and finally 
in payment of his bonds ; also, if this money is a legal-tender, 
gold and silver can be no more than a legal-tender. If it was a 
legal-tender in the purchase of bonds, so it is a legal-tender in 
payment of bonds. If this money is by law a legal-cender, then 
any discrimination made by the government in the payment of 
its creditors, is unjust and invidious. That the laborer Avho works 
in navy yards and forts, and the soldier who perils his life in 
battle, shall be paid in lampblack and rags, and the bankers, 
bondholders, usurers, extortioners and brokers, shall be paid in 
gold and silver bought up by the greenbacks sacrificed in the 
hands of other government creditors, is an offence against justice, 
for which no pretext can be offered, and involves the government 
in every possible crime included in the euphonious terms em- 
ployed by yourself of " wholesale swindling " and " national 
VILLAIN V." 

It places the Government in the attitude of a swindling bank- 
rupt who involves himself in debts which he is unable to pay, 
and then, to rid himself of his obligations, buys up his own notes 
at such discount as is induced by a knowledge of his bad char- 
acter and insolvency, that he may repeat his swindle as often as 
he may renew his bankruptcy by profligacy and extravagance. 



248 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Tliis very thing the Secretary of the Treasury of the United 
States has been doing for the last seven years. The pitiable and 
disgraceful spectacle has been presented to the people of the 
United States, of the Government Agent, sitting in Wall street, 
buying up Government obligations in competition with the sharp- 
ers of Europe and the swindlers of America, including the bond- 
holders Avho, taking advantage of the poverty of the Govern- 
ment, bought up her certificates of credit in their manifold forms. 
In this wise the Government assumed a position involving one 
of these two mortifying conclusions : First — That it was. unable 
to pay its debts, and making a public confession of bankruptcy ; 
or, secondly, that it was squandering the public moneys in an 
unjust discrimination in currencies of equal value. 

The payment of the bonds in greenbacks is neither " wholesale 
swindling " or " national villainy," if greenbacks are a legal 
tender in payment of debts ; and if greenbacks are not a legal ten- 
der in payment of debts, then the payment of bonds in this pre- 
tended currency is not half so monstrous a wholesale swindle or 
national villainy as the imposition of this paper currency upon 
the laboring and producing classes of this country in exchange 
for their toil, and the fruits of the earth, and the liquidation of 
gold and silver-created debts due to honest creditors, untainted 
with usury or fraud. Indeed, if, as you assume, that the pay- 
ment of debts in greenbacks is a national villainy and wholesale 
swindling, then with what name will you designate those who 
have based the whole public and private property and business 
of the country upon this " wholesale swindling " and " national 
villainy," refusing even to recognize the difference in exchange 
consequent upon the depreciation of paper money. 

The extent of this swindle and villainy — if it be swindle and 
villainy to pay debts in greenbacks — can be measured only by 
the aggregate wealth and business of the whole country, which 
for five years have been involved in the action of the Federal 
Government. 

To pay off the bonds in greenbacks either is or is not a " na- 
tional villainy " and " wholesale swindle." 

If it is, then pray what apology can you make to the civilized 
world for your participation in this crime, and what atonement 
can you make for the privation, poverty, bankruptcy and robbery 
of the poor ; the crime and degradation of the people consequent 
upon the unnatural inflation of the currency? And how can 
you excuse the creation of an aristocracy, irresponsible to the or- 
dinary laws of taxation, and building up a system of monopoly 
which absorbs the labor of the poor and establishes the relation 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 249 

of lord and vassal, in a form which can never exist in a free 
country ? 

Lutif to pay off the bonds in greenbacks is not a swindle, then 
why not do this at once, and in one righteous blow strike down 
the whole army of assessors, collectors, spies, pimjis, detectives, 
sponges, vampires and excisemen; with the unnecessary, unjust, 
unequal and oppressive systems of taxation which are necessary 
to support tliem in their detestable vocations. In any view of 
the subject, tiie payment of bonds in greenbacks is eminently 
just. 

If these greenbacks are a legal tender, they are most properly 
the currency in which these bonds sliould be paid. If they are 
not a legal tender, then the men who bought these bonds in a 
valueless currency, cannot complain if their debts are liquidated 
in precisely the same currency as that which they paicl for the 
bond, leaving the bondholder in precisely the same financial con- 
dition that he was before he bought the bonds. 

The payment of the bonds in gold and silver would be 
"wliolesale swindling" and " national robbery," by which the 
people would lose twice the amount of the original debt in the 
final payment, and twice the amount of the annually-accruing 
interest, as well as paying tlie expenses of supporting a consum- 
ing army of officers, who devour the substance of the people, 
wiiich are themselves an incubus upon society, to be dreaded and 
abolished at the earliest possible day as the only moans of re- 
storing the lost liberties of the people. Tlie extent of this fraud 
upon the people is measured by tlie difference between par and 
40 per cent. 

If the greenbacks are not a legal tender, then still should the 
bondholders take them as payment of their interest and bonds. 
If they are not a legal tender, they are a " wholesale swindle " 
and " national robbeiy." But they were conceived, created and 
put in vogue by the bankers, brokers and extortioners of Europe 
and America, who connived corruptly with tlie men in power in 
the United States to perpetrate this wholesale swindling and na- 
tional robbery, to overthrow our simple American system of gov- 
ernment and substitute the odious, rotten, British funding system 
in its stead. It is but just that, flxiling to permanently swindle 
the people, they should be paid in their own money. 

These brokers and " public robbers," these bondholders and 
" national villains," should feel grateful towards a forbearing 
people, that they receive anything at all in compensation for 
their crime against liberty and economy. 

But these certificates of credit are a fraud upon the public 



250 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

economy and the labor of the people, which supports the Gov- 
ernment. A fraud which the bondholders well knew, and bought 
the bonds because they knew they were a fraud, by which they 
were the only gainers and the people Avere the victims. 

These bonds were hawked in the markets in every country in 
the world, and sold at merely nominal prices. As the result of 
this stupendous swindle and villainy, we have this double spec- 
tacle of robbery. The European emigrant flying from the 
standing armies, aristocrasies, monopolies and funded debts of 
Europe, coming to America to pay tariffs, stamps, license, and 
every form of direct and indirect taxation, for the support of the 
very system from which he had fled and the very men who had 
ground him to the earth in Europe, who are now tlie holders of 
American bonds, which tliey bought at forty cents on the dollar. 

The Federal soldier who receives bounty and monthly pay, 
returns home to give one-half of all he earns, in tlie various 
forms of taxation, to refund to the bondholder that which he 
thought he was receiving fi'om the Government ; and for the 
pretended pay given to him for a few years' service in war, he is 
enslaved in perpetual servitude to the manufacturers and bond- 
holders, bankers and usurers, who have grown rich upon his 
blood and the poverty that follows in the wake of destroying 
armies; whilst the widow and orphan of the soldier payback in 
the increased price of their food, raiment, fuel and house rent at 
least twenty per cent, more than the pretended pension which 
they seem to receive. 

The masses of the poor are harassed with taxes, ground down 
by these levies upon their labor, until they are robbed of the 
comforts and stinted in the necessaries of life, to support an 
army of civil officers, who gather up their labor, and the military 
forces which are necessary to enslave the country. 

I need not remind you that not one dollar of these bonds 
cost its face in the purchase, but I will remind you what you 
ought, but seem not to know, that although Congress has the 
power " to borrow money upon the credit of the United States," 
yet it has no right to squander money, and no act of profligacy 
of one Congress can bind either its successors in office or the 
people whom they have misrepresented. 

The payment of bonds in greenbacks is not repudiation in any 
other sense than the payment of any other debts in greenbacks. 
The Government of the United States either can or it cannot 
liquidate its debts and redeem its credits now issued in the form 
of greenbacks, bonds, certificates, etc. If it cannot redeem them, 
then we have already reached repudiation in its worst form of 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 251 

banlvrnptc}^ and have sounded the lowest depths of our financial 
ruin ; all further argument upon the subject is uselessly squan- 
dered ujion a ruined country. But if we can pay the bonds with 
the accruing intere^ duly compounded for twenty or forty years, 
we are really paying them off every eleven and two-third years, 
leaving us the original debt to draw interest in all time to come, 
Mhich I believe is our plan of making a national debt a national 
blessing. We have also left us the civil and military armies, 
wiiich still consume the substance of the people. How much 
easier then, will it be for us to pay oft' this debt at once in green- 
backs and save this vast amount of interest, and release the peo- 
ple from the support of these armies engaged in robbing and 
oppressing them. 

But if we cannot pay oft* the bonds directly in greenbacks, 
how is it possible to pay the interest ; the armies that are genera- 
ted by tiiem ; the banks with their multitudes of officers, and 
the usury extortion and swindling which levy their exhausting 
contributions upon the people, and after this finally pay off the 
bonds. 

You and your friends complain that the payment of bonds in 
greenbacks will overwhelm the country in a paper currency 
which will make it worthless. Greenbacks are money, and there- 
fore a legal tender. They are also the standard and measure of 
value, or they are not. If they are a standard of value, then 
bonds, property, public and private credits, gold, silver, and 
everything else, must conform to it. If they are not a standard 
of value, then again, Mr. Greeley, what apology can you make to 
your readers for the " national villainy " and " wholesale swind- 
ling " in lampblack and rags, which you have j^erpetrated upon 
the country, as the leader and organ of this particular circulating 
medium. If you should undertake this difficult task of riding 
two horses travelling in opposite directions and fail, you will 
hardly convince intelligent people by the use of slang phrases 
that you have succeeded, unless at the same time you shall re- 
lieve them of taxation which weighs them to the earth. 

The bonds as they now stand will never be paid in gold and sil- 
ver, neither the principal, nor the interest very long. The question 
will be fairly laid before the people, and time will perfect a com- 
plete organization of the horny-handed laborers of the Mississ- 
ippi Valley, who will forget mere party issues, and demand the 
])ayment of the bonds in greenbacks, — a release of the idle cap- 
ital now enchained in the funding system, and its active employ- 
ment in the business of the country. 

AYe are growing in numbers, increasing in power, and com- 



252 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

pacting our forces. You now refuse to argue tlie case, but tlie 
people undei'stand the argument, and when aroused Avill sweep 
you down like leaves in a burning forest. 

Even the bondholders will gladly seek refuge in this mode of 
adjusting the public debt to preserve the debt from absolute and 
overwhelming repudiation. 

I will not call in question the modesty of a gentleman who 
procured the publication of his biography in his early manhood, 
before he had conquered a city, governed a nation, or invented 
any new or useful implement of industry. I will not sit in 
judgment over the fitness of a gentleman who defends wholesale 
swindling and national villainy, who commenced his career as a 
journalist by catering to the low tastes of the rabble, in the in- 
terest of the second-rate theatres of New York, Avho leaped from 
the disgusting pit of the Bowery to the lead of city morality. I 
will not call in question the candor of a moralist who lent his 
paper to the use of the monstrous villainies of the spiritualists in 
the days of their wildest absurdities, for the purpose of selling 
his paper, then laughing in his sleeve, gravely informs the people 
that he did all this for their benefit. I will not impugn the 
motives of a generous hearted gentleman who has labored in the 
interest of agrarianism until the deluded people have built up 
your paper, and then suddenly became the defender of hereditary 
monopoly, growing rich in the change of opinions and patrons. 
I will not indulge in malignant expressions in regard to the 
courage of a hero who tamely allows a bully to break a cane over 
his head, and then turns to seek his revenge in the entire destruc- 
tion of the civilization and glory of a continent, whose best 
blood has been shed to slake his thirst in an appaling civil war. 
I will refrain from an allusion to the honesty of a lobbyist, who 
pockets one thousand dollars as a gift of river contractors,- and 
after slandering everybody else, seeks refuge in libel suits, where 
the truth will not be allowed in testimony to justify the publica- 
tion. He is certainly a fit person to decline to argue the ques- 
tion of the payment of the bonds in greenbacks, because it is 
" wholesale swindling," who denounced the taking of constructive 
mileage, and books whicli pertained to the business of the repre- 
sentative, and afterwards voted for the same gift of books, for 
which he M'as arraigned at the time for falsehood by Dr. Tom O. 
Edwards, a Congressman from Ohio, the glaring character of 
which was so flagrant and transparent, that many years after- 
wards, Geo. G. Dunn, of Indiana, in his place in the House, 
simply recited the facts which effectually silenced your batteries, 
then directed against moderate republicans. This circumstance 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 253 

loses nono of its force in tlie fact that your assailants were yonr 
life-long political confreres. I can scarcely refrain from levity 
in the recollection that you connived at your own arrest and 
momentary imprisonment in Europe, to give notoriety to your- 
self and circulation to your newspaper in America, and then be- 
come tlie advocate of arrests without authority of law, and lent 
your Tribune to the entire obliteration of the safegurds of liberty 
and the corruption of a generation of your countrymen. 

I will, however, do you justice in the only consistent act of 
your life. Having yourself taught secession as the leading tenet 
of your political faitli, you were but carrying out your own prin- 
ciples to generously relieve Mr. Jefferson Davis by going his bail. 
Having no time for personal controversy, and no disposition to 
bandy epithets even with yourself, much less with the insects 
whom you so properly portray as in control of your party press, 
I will not waste time in the discussion of your courage, your 
consistency, your integrity or your veracity ; this has all been 
attended to in your biography. 

I therefore again renew my challenge, and hope you will try 
to exculpate yourself from the charge of jjarticeps eriminis in 
the " wholesale swindling " and " national villainy," and argue 
the question proposed in my last letter. 

I am yours, Heney Clay DeaN. 

DuEuciUE, Iowa, Oct. 1st; 1867. 



254 CKIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



CHAPTER XII. 



The Sacred Debt. 



The debt of the United States overshadows all of our con- 
ceptions of the value of property, and confuses the clearest mind. 
In the computation of numbers, in its attempt to apprehend the 
amount, it stands as an impassable mountain between a powerful 
people and their prosperity ; a great gulf yawning between the 
exactions of their government and their liberties. 

But there is a part of the unaudited obligation of the people 
to the living, dying and dead, which, sacred in its nature, must 
become so more and more as the objects of its creation slowly 
disappear from the masses of the people. 

This is that Avhich will forever bind the consciences of good 
men to relieve the wants and promptly pay that which is due to 
the widows, orphans and wounded soldiers, in pensions, bounties 
and back pay. Their claim is the price of wasted human life and 
manhood. They command the sympathies and are dependent 
upon the prompt justice of the country, for support. The care 
of these is a debt of honor which fairly mortgages the property 
of the country and the consciences of the people. 

By the unvarying usages of all valorous peoples, the true sol- 
dier is entitled to consideration and support. With Americans 
who are jirouder of our prowess than of our Christian virtues ; 
more emulous of our acquisitions of territory than of our scru- 
pulous adherence to principles of justice; more reliant upon 
physical power than reason, for the perpetuity of our govern- 
ment ; who esteem valor as the highest attribute of manliood, to 
be consistent with ourselves must support our disabled soldiens, 
no difference where they fought, or whether the wars were just 
or unjust. This obligation is primary and imperious, and ex- 
tends to all those brave men who, moved by the love of country, 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 255- 

Imperillecl their lives in defence of their convictions, whether in 
the Federal or Confederate service ; each acting, as he believed, 
in obedience to law, and following the direction of the highest 
instincts and noblest impulses of his better nature. After the 
first impulses die out and the ardor of sensation cools off in times 
of war, all armies are recruited with unwilling men driven as 
cattle to the slaughter, or caught as fish in the net, having neither 
the power to resist the forces of conscription, or the means to es- 
cape the meshes laid to entrap them. 

They obey the government de facto, and are not permitted to 
enquire after the government de jure. In the late mournful 
conflict, four gloomy years witnessed the triumph of arms ; the 
suppression of reason, the supremacy of brute force, and the 
universal slavery of the people to military caprice. Death 
planted his thorny hedge around every habitation, and no one 
dare cross the threshold of his own dwelling, except by martial 
command, at his peril. The Federal soldier was conscripted, and 
left the harassing choice of being shot down on his own hearth, 
for resisting authority ; shot or hung for desertion, or blown 
away by the enemy's cannon on the battle-field. The Confed- 
erate, in like manner pressed into the army, was stimulated to 
active warfare by the invasion of the enemy, to fight in defence 
of all that was held sacred to home, or hope, or tradition, which 
were swept down with a reckless and ruthless devastation, that 
left desolation in its pathway. Each soldier did what he was 
compelled to do. How vain the unnatural conception, that all 
of the essential attributes of a redeemed and glorious nature, 
stamped with the impress of the deity, may be obliterated by the 
extravagant exercise of a senseless and ferocious legislation. 

Such legislation, discriminating against the plainest precepts 
of justice, and most palpable behests of right, are the basis of 
our current action. These legislators dream of the burial, of 
the affection and devotion of the child in the tomb, of the fiither 
who fell on his door-sill in defence of the honor of his hearth- 
stone, and sanctity of the family altar. 

This infernal crime against nature in all of the wicked annals 
of a fiillen race, never has been consummated, — never Avill be — 
whilst the last lingering scintillation of the light of the image 



256 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

and glory of God, shining in the face of Jesus Christ, glows 
through the darkened avenues of immortal man. The child 
will honor the parent that gave him birth ; Nature has ordained 
it so; God has rewarded it as a holy duty, with the first promise 
of long life, the land of the parent and child, and has appointed 
the earthly parent as the medium through which he preserves the 
worship of His eternal throne. 

After the close of the late war, to rob the unfortunate soldiers 
of the Confederate army of their pension bounties and back 
pay due them, and their still more unfortunate families, an 
amendment was proposed to the Constitution of the United 
States. The enactment of such a law is shocking atheism, 
which blots out the very idea of a father. It is sacrilegious, 
and erases from the decalogue its great commandment, " Honor 
thy father and thy mother." It is no less a crime against charity 
than an offence against religion. It demands that men shall 
withhold a just debt from the maimed, disabled, disfigured and 
distressed of their own household. 

The strange commingling of angelic aspirations and animal 
attachment in our being, will forever preserve a free and enlight- 
ened people from the forgetful ness of the wrongs inflicted upon, 
and sufferings endured by devoted ancestry. 

Eleven millions of the most refined and proud-spirited people 
of the nineteenth century will not suffer the wrongs repeated 
upon themselves to obliterate the recollections of the sufferings 
and self-denial of their fathers by the same relentless hands, nor 
ought such a people attempt to drown tlieir sorrows in the sea of 
their degradation. Vain creature, miserable wretches, lustful 
savages, mercenary robbers, inhuman murderers, incarnate fiends, 
whose wicked hands are bathed in the hallowed blood of inno- 
cence, whose vile passions of covetousness, hate, and brutal 
amours have been glutted, but not satiated, upon defenceless 
victims of misfortune, you mistake the decrees of fate, the. des- 
tinies of fortune, and more than all, the unchangeable retribur 
tions of justice, who dream that the cruelty of tyrants can ob- 
literate the instincts of our being. All such laws as the proposed 
amendment will be vain. ^ These edicts will be transmitted to 
the next generation, who will visit the consecrated gra''js of their 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 257 

canonized fothers, baptize tl<em with their tears, and swear by 
the throne of eternal justice, to vindicate their memories and 
avenoe their wrongs. 

Others who look upon the fragments of the bodies of the im- 
mortal dead, scattered on the mountains or sinking in the swamps, 
will be stimulated to retaliation by tliat unutterable horror 
which lends poetry to the distance and transfers to the intellect 
that which before reveled in the passions, and makes that hatred 
a duty and principle, which before had been but an irritation. 

From the ashes of ruined mansions will arise poets who infuse 
the notes of sorrow in their national muse to touch to tenderness 
the enduring passions of human nature, where philosophers and 
statesmen had hitherto addressed the understanding and appealed 
to the interest merely. These poets, aroused with a deep and 
abiding sense of their own wrongs, will paint in colors of tire 
touching, horrible, revolting suifering, crimes and torture, 
which the besotted jjublic journals had bespattered or suppressed, 
but which will find responding images in the chambers of tlio 
souls of those who saw and suffered them ; and which truthful 
chronicles of passing events were suppressed for daring to ex- 
pose. 

This amendment of the Constitution will not modify the pas- 
sions of the generations who nurture these reflections as the 
only inheritance of their father's, spared them from the ravages 
of fire. These legacies will lose nothing in either amount or 
importance, transmitted by the traditional tongues of those who 
participated in them ; and they will become infinitely more pre- 
cious, and be preserved with more care than profligates bestow 
upon the patrimonies of richer but less honorable ancestors. 

When, for a simple dilFerence of opinion, such a civil war as 
ours had transpired, and the generous combatants, forgetting the 
conflicts just closed, had, in a general truce, kindly buried their 
dead, and Avith mutual forgiveness for the hateful past, joined 
in perpetual friendship and alliance, much less then than now 
would have been the fever of the soul, and the fire of the blood 
enkindling in the bosom of all that is superhuman and sub-hu- 
man in strange combination. Even then the pride that begets 
affection aiid the affection that begets pride, nay, more, the afiec- 
17 



258 CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 

tion and pride that begets that devotion which is only less than 
worship, and partakes of the nature of worship itself of the 
dead, and an adoration of their memory, will recall all of their 
valiant deeds, and make their very vices seem virtues to their 
injured and insulted offspring. Long after the names of their 
persecutors are forgotten, and the stench of their infamy arises 
from the grave, every maimed and wounded soldier who fought 
to defend their homes from the torch, and their wives, sisters, 
mothers and daughters from insult and outrage, will be cheered 
by the children of the schools as he passes by the roadside. It 
will seem as a charity of heaven to bestow the good things of the 
earth upon the soldiers' widow ; and his orphans will be accounted 
the children of the commonwealth ; and they who went to battle 
to destroy them, Avill be called their murderers. 

Then will every memento be readily gathered up and carefully 
laid by, as a relic ot those better days of American history, 
when a proud and noble people, smarting under insult and 
threatened with invasion, dared resist violent usurpation with 
arms, to preserve their rights of self-governments, the forms of 
religious worship in their churches, and the sanctity of their 
grave yards. 

It is a mockery of the great laws of our being, and an insult 
to that inexplicable philosophy of sympathy which inevitably 
attracts us to those we love in the distant generation of the past, 
and those to whom we look with hope in tiiedim distance of the 
future, to presume that military orders, legislative edicts, and ex- 
hibitions of governmental brutality, can efface the veneration 
which the devoted living, cherish for the immortal dead. 

The rancorous denunciation of party spirit will not transmit 
its bitterness in triumph over those natural affections which 
have their deep foundations laid in the commandments of God, 
and nurtured by the nobler instincts of man. This was a 
war of revenge ; the lowest passion of the human soul which 
God has benevolently denied to nearly all of the lower order of 
animals. But it will scarcely satisfy a whole people to denounce 
their fathers as traitors, rebels and outlaws ; or change their con- 
victions to heap upon them all the obloquy of the vocabulary 
of tyrants. An injured and insulted people will slowly rally 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 259 

and become defiant, will repel these charges with eulogies of the 
heroic patriotism of their fathers in defending constitutional 
right, wliich madmen, robbers, and tyrants had invaded with 
mercenary armies. 

The sullen masses will scowl at the charge of rebellion, and 
prove usurpation of powers not granted by the constitution, and 
stud their arguments with diamonds and jewels which were 
strewed along the whole history of the ante-revolutionary period, 
and fixed as ornamental in the Declaration of Independence, in 
the Constitution of the United States, and in the teachings of all 
of our statesmen. 

To the charge of outlawry they will challenge trial by jury, 
and proudly point to the records of their courts as administered 
injustice and enforced by law. 

But writhing under injustice which may find no redress, these 
people will nurse their untamed passions, and grief will seek ref- 
uge in revenge. 

Such has been the historic sequel of tyranny every where. 
When inflamed to its highest frenzy, revenge is more than all 
other passions ; lawless, because of all it is the basest. The cur- 
rent checked in its deep, silent course, leaps over dams and ob- 
structions, seeking its natural outlet in revolution. 

It is the duty of the Southern people to care for the Southern 
soldiers, their orphans and widows ; a duty sacred as the obliga- 
tions of society, whether composed or decomposed. It is the 
duty of the Northern people to care for theirs. Here is the great 
distinction justly drawn between the two-fold character of our 
debt, what is funded to the capitalists and what is due to the 
soldier. 

The capitalist pleads his aid in the great cause of the war and 
the sacred character of his debt as a reason why it should not be 
repudiated, but that is doubly the stronger argument for the re- 
pudiation of the mere bonded debt ; that men having the great- 
est amount of property are most benefited by it, and can well 
afford to forgive the debt. 

The battles of the country having been fought by the laboring 
masses, it is unjust that they should labor in all time to come, 
in slavery, to pay the extortioners, usurers, brokers and bankers 



260 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 

who have coined fortunes out of their blood to economize it to 
their children. But the debt due the soldier in both sections of 
the country, is one of charity and honor, which it is cruel to re- 
pudiate. It is equally unjust that capital should be allowed 
to get rid of a debt which in every age, country and form of 
government, has been accounted a mortgage upon the property, 
affections and honor of a people. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 261 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Repudiation the Last Refuge of Profligacy. 

As there are catch words that serve to cheer multitudes on to 
the ardent ready service of tyrants, and make them hasten jubi- 
lantly on their way to the most degrading servitude, so are there 
other words that dampen the ardor of good men in the manly 
pursuit of justice. 

When men would throw off an oppressive yoke, they are de- 
nominated rebels, as though there were any other means of free- 
ing an injured people from oppression, except by resistance with 
a force more than equal to that employed by the oppressor. 
When a people, ground to the earth, would fain give their earn- 
ings to their families and cast off the terrible yoke of debt, each 
attempt is resisted by the mad-dog cry of repudiation. 

There is an odium affixed to the word repudiation, much more 
attributable to circumstances than to substances. 

THE EXTENT OF REPUDIATION. 

The human family have lived in perpetual bankruptcy. The 
account books of the world demonstrate that nine out of every 
ten of the inventors, business men, merchants and bankers of the 
world, after having lived on the labor of the poor, have died in- 
solvent. This is repudiation in its most absolute form. They 
did not pay, they could not pay their debts. The creditor lost 
his debt, repudiation could not go farther. In full view of this 
natural condition of things, the Jewish law wisely pro- 
vided FOR periodical REPUDIATION. 

So carefully were the inequalities of life, the injustice of men 
and the sufferings of the poor contemplated by Moses, that provis- 
ions were made in the Jewish economy for the liberation of all 
debtors from their debts, the restoration of their lands and the 



262 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

entire emancipation of the people from the power of tlie oppres- 
sor, that in the year of jubilee, there was an universal repudia- 
tion of debts, cancellation of mortgages and restoration of prop- 
erty to the former owners. The justice, wisdom, and policy of 
the Mosaic law is the admiration of mankind, but the acme of 
the Jewish system was repudiation of debts, without which there 
could have been no jubilee. Total repudiation among the Jews, 
was a periodical remedy for oppression, and relief of the people ; 
not only of their ordinary debts, but this remedy extended to 
the return of their lands which had been mortgaged. In the terse 
language of Josephus, " The jubilee wherein debtors were freed 
from their debts, and those slaves set at liberty, which slaves be- 
came such though they were of the same stock, by transgressing 
some of those laws, whose punishment was not capital, but they 
were punished by methods of slavery." This jubilee was the 
great national festival of the Jews, the only people to whom God 
deigned direct revelations. The celebration of this occasion Avas 
just in principle, wise in policy and a necessity to the poor. This 
provision of the Jewish law was founded en this great axiom of 
political economy, that the debtor is by virtue of their relation, 
the slave of the creditor, so also, is the borrower the servant of 
the lender. 

Debt begets peonage in Mexico, imprisonment in England, 
scandal, suiFering and servitude every where. The purity of 
public morals, the sanctity of religion, the freedom of elections, 
the impartiality of the judiciary, the independence of the citizen 
and the dignity of free government cannot be long maintained 
by a people oppressed by a ponderous national debt. The Jewish 
system which held all of their people equal, under, subject to, 
and protected by law, forbid the existence of transmissible debt 
in their personal responsibility. 

The American Fathers repudiated their debt. His- 
tory will forever fail in the attempt to present to mankind a 
purer, loftier-minded generation than the founders of the Amer- 
ican Government or a more worthy or useful generation than the 
creditors of the American revolutionary Congress, yet it became 
necessary that the debt involved in the issuance of Continental 
Currency be repudiated by the Congress who failed to appropriate 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 263 

money for the payment of the debt, and it was gracefully sub- 
mitted to by the people. The reasons were few, direct, and over- 
Avhelming. The people had just escaped from a successful, 
though terrible conflict, for freedom from a foreign despotism. 
The largest number of them had fled or been banished the gov- 
ernments of the old world to escape the crushing taxation con- 
sequent upon the national debts created by wars to maintain a 
magnificent sovereignty. These things were fresh on their 
minds ; they knew that the debt would make them slaves of 
petty tyrants ; they anticipated and avoided what we suffer in 
helplessness and cowardice. 

With the overthrow of British power in America, our fathers 
accomplished the suppression of a monied aristocracy. The very 
oppression from which the Colonists sought escape, emanated in 
a national funding debt, that mortgaged the labor of every British 
subject in every quarter of the globe and in the isles of the sea. 
The very monarch against whose oppressive power they rebelled, 
drew his sustenance from this funded debt. 

The aristocracy, against whose existence they provided pro- 
hibitions in the Constitution, was not to be compared in odious- 
ness to the bonded aristocracy proposed by the funding system of 
the United States. 

The taxation against which they made war and fought, was in 
villainy, opi)ression and magnitude not comparable with that 
with which we are now oppressed and overburdened. 

The Continental money was never redeemed, and thousands of 
the poorer and middle classes were bankrupted, by the ftiilure of 
the Government to redeem it with equivalents. It sank in value 
to three shillings on the pound, and finally became utterly worth- 
less. 

Austria, France and England have in their turn, followed the 
fortunes of war and repudiated in some form or other. But why 
should we refer to Austria, to France, or burden these pa- 
ges with the dry details of the repudiation consequent upon 
the revolution of every country in the world, when Ave have 
adopted repudiation as the law of the land. We have spent the 
last decade in repudiation of the highest of all obligations, our 
written constitutional contracts, and finally the Constitution it- 



264 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

self. We were the only people upon the face of the earth who 
recognized government as a contract entered into by the people 
with themselves for their protection. This was not a mere rhe- 
torical flourish or glittering generality ; it was a fict reduced to 
a system, and the people had entered into a written agreement, a 
constitution for their own government and the restriction of their 
lawgivers, who were but their servants, chosen for the purpose. 
Those who were born under its influence, and reared by its be- 
neficence, need but its mention to venerate its authors, and follow 
its fortunes, and imperil their lives in its defence. 

The very war in the prosecution of which, this debt was crea- 
ted was a repudiation of the contract of self-government in de- 
tail, in its substance and vitality. Those well-recognized person- 
al rights which had made the English Constitution the pride 
of the Christian era, were struck down at one blow. The free- 
dom of the press, the freedom of speech, the freedom of con- 
science, the right of trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus, were 
repudiated, and all of the Constitutional interpreters of law were 
made subservient to the arbitrary will of every person, acting in 
violation of law by military authority. If this be true, is 
it possible that any debt contracted in overthrowing a system of 
government, can be of binding force under that same govern- 
ment ? 

Every constitutional element of civil power in the country 
which was by law invested with authority to contract, was in 
duress; utterly incapable of contracting or bending either itself, 
or those it represented, for it could represent no one. 

The obligation of the slave to work for his master was purely 
a legal one ; an investment of money under the protection of law. 
If it were a sinful one, it was the sin of the whole country and 
not of any class of men. It was the sin of the law, not of the 
slaveholder. This relation we have repudiated with the full sum 
of three thousand millions of dollars of money legally invested 
in this particular interest. It is true that it was argued that this 
system was oppressive ; so do I argue that the debt is oppressive 
beyond all endurance. It is argued that slavery was unjust; so 
do I argue that this funding system is unjust. It is argued that 
the system of slavery was cruel ; that it was used to enslave the 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 265 

poor and helpless black man. So do I argue that the present 
debt is used as a means to enslave the poor white man with the 
black man, to make them both the servants of the capitalist and 
bondholder. 

It is emphatically presented, that the system of slavery was 
transmitted from the parents to innocent children yet unborn. 
So do I argue that the bonded system of our debt is being trans- 
mitted to innocent generations, who will be stinted of sustenance 
in their mother's womb, and oppressed all the days of their lives, 
to pay the penalty of their perpetual servitude to their task- 
masters. But if such a repudiation in contravention of law, may 
be made under the plea of military necessity for the overthrow 
of a written constitution, how much stronger is the argument 
for the repudiation of a debt of equal magnitude, under the plea 
of a civil necessity, for the perpetuity of a system of free gov- 
ernment in which the distinction between the rich and the poor 
shall be merely of the imagination ? It is argued that African 
slavery created an overbearing aristocracy. So we argue that the 
bonds have created a most offensive oligarchy, that not only 
claims to rule society, but assumes to rule the government. 

The Government of the United States has pressed repudiation 
further. It has prohibited the payment of debts contracted by 
the different Confederate States during the last five years, and 
made their repudiation, a prerequisite condition to their re-ad- 
mission into the Union. The repudiation of these debts was the 
more remarkable and flagrantly unjust, that it was an unnecessary 
interference between the debtor and creditor, when it could in no 
wise interfere with the existing and accruing relations of the 
citizens of the States and the Federal government — the more so 
that the debts were not all by any means voluntarily contracted 
upon the part of the creditors, and were for monies borrowed to 
construct railroads, and all of the necessary machinery of civil 
government without which people can have no political or social 
existence. Debts made sacred by all of the formal obligations 
of contract. Debts by loans forced from unwilling people 
and applied in the ordinary transactions of legitimate business. 
Debts forced from men who took no part in the late civil war. 
Debts due to soldiers conscripted into an army by the supreme 



266 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

power of a State, acknowledged as belligerent, whose wages were 
the only means of the support of their families, were all repu- 
diated. The total amount repudiated is quite four billions of 
dollars. Revolutions never go backward ; and it is impossible in 
the nature of human philosophy that a revolution inaugurated 
by repudiating all of the paraphernalia of government; repu- 
diating debts, constitutions, treaties — its own contracts to ex- 
change prisoners and every other obligation, will halt by the 
wayside to cavil about small matters of honor in repudiating a 
system of oppression founded in fraud. 

The basis of the dominant party which involved the 
country in the debt, is revolutionary, and founded 
uron universal repudiation. 

The character of a re]3udiator is most strikingly drawn by the 
late Senator Douglas in a delineation of his Senatorial col- 
league : " Trumbull was one of our own cotcmporaries. He 
was born and raised in old Connecticut; was bred a Federalist, 
but, removing to Georgia, turned nullifier when nullification was 
popular, and as soon as he had disposed of his clocks and wound 
up his business, and migrated to Illinois, turned politician and 
lawyer. Here he made his appearance in 1841 as a member of the 
Legislature. He became noted as the author of the scheme to 
repudiate a large portion of the State debt of Illinois." 

It is surprising that it should have escaped the observation of 
intelligent gentlemen, that the work of repudiation has not been 
confined to the action of Congress as aifecting the peo])le of the 
Southern States merely. They have applied it to their European 
creditors. In the payment of the interest of the public del)t in 
New York, the Legislature computed the interest not according 
to the monetary value of treasury notes, but a paper dollar for a 
gold dollar, when they were worth not fifty per cent, on their 
nominal value. Here was a reiDudiation of fifty per cent, of the 
debt. The same system of repudiation has been brought near to 
us and become universal. A borrowed of B in 1860, the sum 
of |plOO,000 in gold. B pays him in August, 1864, with ^'100,- 
000 in greenbacks, equal in gold to $35,000 ; a repudiation of 
$65,000. 

This repudiation extended to the interest on the widow's an- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 267 

nulty, and to every financial transaction : a repudiation of sixty- 
five per cent, of all debts and indebtedness in the country. 

But it is the misfortune of government itself, that repudiation 
has been general and enormous by tlie United States. It was 
computed by Judge Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury, that 
more than $800,000,000 in coin, or about $2,000,000,000 in 
greenbacks, as computed in July, 1864, had been unprovided for 
in Congressional legislative appropriations since 1789, the date 
of the adoption of the Constitution. Such is the uncertainty of 
the claims dependent upon government liquidation ; such the 
enormous repudiation of debts which seemed just to the creditors. 
Like the " graveyard " in the Mississippi, which is strewn with 
the fragments of ruined ships, warn the approaching steamers to 
carefully feel their way through the maelstrom, so will shrewd 
capitalists as carefully look to the investment of money in the 
doubtful debts due from the United States, contracted in the 
frenzied heat of political excitement, at a time when the country 
was ruled by a party representing a minority of the people, to 
destroy the government in flagrant opposition to a vast majority. 

But there is no fact in the history of this war debt more start- 
ling than this : that the great body of these bankers and bond- 
holders were, at the beginning of the war, but poor men ; many 
of them helpless bankrupts, and many of the pretended loans 
were mere collusions between bankers and government officers, 
entered into for the purpose of creating money for the one and 
j)ower for the other, at the expense of the people, who would be 
required to raise standing armies from their children to support 
this power and contribute taxes from their labor to maintain the 
funding system. 

This has always been the case in the history of paper money 
inflations : that the pretended benefactors of government have 
been simply swindlers, who have imposed upon the people their 
worthless promises to pay in lieu of money as the pretext for 
their robbery. 

This is true, with scarcely an exception, in every country, that 
the government is never assisted by paper money in any war 
Those who issue it amass fortunes by the issue. To this one our 
country has not been an exception. 



268 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL. WAR. 

In the history of insolvent estates, bankrupts, merchants, 
contested debts and repudiated obligations, which make up the 
assests of the last six years, it must not startle mankind that the 
honest people have thrown off the yoke rudely placed upon them 
by reckless and unscrupulous tyrants. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 269 



CHAPTER XIV. 

The Character of the Loan which Constitutes the Debt. 

The superior virtues, claims and character of the public debt 
have been urged with wonderful pertinacity to demonstrate that 
the debt is not only solvent beyond contingency, but invested 
with mysterious charms and attractions which have enamored 
the slaves of their masters, and set the people begging for heavier 
tasks. It is urged that 

This debt differs from all other debts in the fact that all 
other loans are held by a very few persons, whilst this particular 
debt is owned by everybody. 

This is not true, and if it were, would be of no importance 
whatever, in the force with which the debt must drive us to 
bankruptcy and repudiation. 

It is not true that these bonds are even generally owned by 
the common people of the country. They are precisely like 
other bonds in every other country in the world ; they belong to 
the rich, who, having no use for their money, loan it in the best 
market. The very small bonds which were intended to popu- 
larize this loan, were scattered broadcast among the people of 
moderate circumstances in life. Butthe great laws of gravitation 
were brought to bear upon them. It were impossible that the 
scattered drops, puddles, and pools of water escape the laws of 
absorption, and not find their way back to the sea or the skies ; 
but not less absurd to suppose that the poor, the moderate, or 
even the middle classes of society will control or hold in any 
permanent form, the funded stocks of any country. In the 
United States the first year was a failure in this attempt. Thous- 
ands of well meaning, deluded people thought to assist the 
government by buying up its securities, as the old lady gave her 
feeble breath to aid the hurricane. 



270 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

But the immediate wants of their families soon drove the poor 
people with their small bonds into market as an inconvenient 
currency, and many of these humble speculators lost the interest 
with from three to ten per cent, of their loyal investments, and 
were but poorly repaid for their enterprise, with the ardor of 
their patriotism greatly damped and damaged. 

The gradual contraction of tiie banknote circulation will soon 
throw all of these bonds into the market, except those held by the 
capitalist. This will press down their value to a heavier dis- 
count, and each poor bondholder who has lost in the sale of his 
bond, will then sympathize with the taxpayer, who must meet 
the accruing interest. The abundance of the small bonds as a 
part of the currency, will increase as the currency contracts its 
volume. Then the bonds will find their way into the vault of 
the millionaire ; will be bought and sold in Europe. America, 
drained of her specie, will be unable to even approximate to the 
redemption of her national bank notes. This brings the direct 
conflict of the nations, and revives the old strife between the in- 
stitutions of the old and new world — between ennobled capital 
and republican labor. American republicans will very unwil- 
lingly support European monopolies, who took advantage of 
their internal dissensions and pressing necessities to buy up their 
obligations at ruinous rates of discount. To get rid of this 
perpetual slavery, any subterfuge will be sought. It were better 
to do anything which would bring relief. Repudiation will be 
declared the only hope. Hepudiation will be announced as the 
just and legitimate remedy ; will appear in platforms, conven- 
tions, be inscribed on flags and patriotic mottoes. 

It has baen the source of unlimited assurance among bond- 
holders, that there could be no failure in the ultimate payment, 
of the bonds, because the government M^as so pledged as to make 
the failure impossible. This has been anticipated, but there has 
been no greater fallacy urged or relied upon as an unfailing 
source of solv^ency of the bonds, " that so many men own and 
are interested in them, therefore they will be paid." 

In looking over the notes and list of debtors, the thoughtful 
creditors are much more concerned about the number, condition, 
liability and responsibility of their debtors than of their co- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 271 

creditors. Now, who are these debtors ? They are the people 
of the country who o\Yn none of these bonds ; the tax -payers 
who pay the stamps, tariffs and taxes levied for the support of 
the bondholder, the men who dig the canals, build the railroads, 
level the forests, enclose the prairies ; the murmuring music of 
whose steady-going mills coin the wealth of America. These 
tax-payers are the voters of the country ; when they awake from 
their slumber in defence of their rights, in performance of the 
duties they owe to themselves, their families, tlieir country, and 
God, will rush in one vast moving cloud to the polls, and paint 
repudiation on their banners. Honest, able leaders will cheer- 
fully carry their cause before the country. The very same mer- 
cenary hirelings who now pollute the halls of Congress and bear 
in their pockets triple bribes from the bankers, for bank legisla- 
tion, from the manufacturers for votes to impose tariffs, and from 
contractors for appropriations when they see the temper of the 
people, will hasten to render them their services to repudiate 
this very debt. 

When the legal tender is absorbed in the purchase of bonds 
and burned up by the Treasury Department, or which is just 
as probable in the corrupt vascillations of the parvenues who 
have been added to the Supreme Bench, under a change of cir- 
cumstances, should, by the merest accident, do right — and de- 
clare that treasury notes are not a legal tender under the Constitu- 
tion. Then pray what have the people left them to pay their 
debts, transact their business, meet their accruing taxes, and 
carry on the extravagance of governing the country by a mili- 
tary despotism. 

For any of these purposes, there will be left no gold and silver 
to bear any adequate relation to the business of the country. 

A speedy return to specie payment Avill be repudiation in an- 
other form ; will snuff national banks entirely out as a taper 
light is quenched in an autumnal storm; the very day upon 
which the legal tender is placed upon its constitutional basis, the 
bank note currency will sink, from New York to Sau Francisco, 
full one hundred per cent. 

The time employed to go through the farce of redemption, 
would not occupy thirty minutes to each bank. 



272 CHIMES OF the civil wae. 

Then will a free press, not suborned, dare speak boldly out, 
and join the general denunciation by honest men, of the whole 
mammoth, murderous swindle. Demagogues, catching the gen- 
eral current in its charge, will also change. The corruj)tion of 
the tyrants, who have trifled with the public liberty and appro- 
priated the public property to themselves, will be exposed and 
denounced with the more readiness by their confreres, who will 
dread the public wrath none the less, because they have partici- 
pated in the general crime. 

But when the true character of our debt is fully fathomed, 
bankruptcy will overwhelm us, and repudiation is the end of 
national banking, — and repudiation is inevitable. 

The national bank currency cannot be secured against insol- 
vency by any kind of bonds, much less by the bonds now issued 
by the government, for the depreciation of the bonds carries the 
currency down with it. The history yet fresh, of free banking 
in every State in the Union, where it has been adopted, fully 
explodes the folly, that a fluctuating system of reckless and irre- 
sponsible State indebtedness affords any reliable guaranty for the 
redemption of bank paper issued upon its credit. 

The property of the country, although the very best possible 
security, is not a good guaranty for its redemption. If the 
estates of the country were put into the market of the world, 
they would not command the amount in cash, unless the bond- 
holders and other creditors of the government, would accept 
the property and relinquish tlie debt, which they would not be 
insane enough to do, and agree to bear the burdens of a govern- 
ment so administered as to create and perpetuate such a debt. 
But when the naked question comes to the direct issue of the de- 
livery up of the property of the country, then the alternative is 
easy, natural, ready, popular. Repudiation is the refuge of a 
ruined people from perpetual slavery, sought with eagerness 
and accepted with joy. 

There are two overpowering causes operating to make bonds 
worthless, at the very time when they approximate to tiie 
largest fractional part of the available wealth of a country. 
These causes are wonderfully operative in a government like 
ours. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAH. ^73 

The people have been educated to freedom of opinion, of 
speech, and of action ; but in nothing have they been liithcrto 
so free as from Federal taxation ; scarcely one of the present 
generation ever saw a Federal tax-gatherer. They were even 
incredulous as to the existence of the abhorrent hordes of vam- 
pires that suck the blood of labor in every despotism of Europe. 

Every religious anniversary of the country was enlivened by 
graphic pictures, drawn of European suffering, produced by the 
hands of the excisemen and tithe-collectors. 

Our fourth of July was a holiday set apart for the purpose of 
denouncing, with righteous vehemence, the costliness of arbi- 
trary governments, the extravagance of rulers, the profligacy of 
the rich and the consequent suffering of the poor. Now, when 
in this country, the road-sides are strewed and the highways be- 
set with tax-gatherers, men are unwilling to believe their own 
eyes. The audacity of these leeches and the innumerable army 
of them, at first overwhelmed the people ; — nay more, they were 
confounded. The tax-payer has at length, after great forbear- 
ance, commenced murmuring, and one universal storm hangs 
lowering over the country ; its clouds cover the sun, its vapors 
fill tiie air. 

When thoroughly aroused, as time and distress must arouse 
those still retaining their self-respect; and when they speak, 
freely as men must speak, who are not deprived of their powers 
of speech, they will grow restive, form combinations and raise 
en masse, and put an end to the general curse entailed upon them. 
Such has been the steady course of justice in every age of the 
world. The time may be slow and seem long to the impatient, 
but it will certainly come as the immutable justice of God. The 
terror of the storm will so gather strength in the delay, that 
when let loose, will sweep down every obstacle in its angry path- 
way, to complete repudiation. With how much less of good 
feeling will the toiling multitudes, with the sweat dripping from 
their brows, covenant to transmit this accumulating curse to 
their latest generation. 

No such .debt ever has been paid. It is but simple justice to 
candor to assume that no one believes that this debt ever will 
be paid. It ought not to be paid unless it is the settled policy 
18 



274 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

of the government, and the full purpose of the people, In our 
revolutionized condition to make our slavery universal, uncon- 
ditional and perpetual. 

That the debt should be paid is abhorrent to every sentiment of 
justice; to agree that it shall not be paid, is repudiation. The 
payment of the bonds will find its friends turned to enemies, 
with the cliange of circumstances. The interests of men will 
emancipate them ; self-preservation will intervene, and stand 
between them and their past thraldom. The faithful press, un- 
muzzled by military power, Avill be joined by the faithless press 
following the indications of the popular current. The working 
men of the country will clamor to wipe out the debt and forget 
it. The greedy patriots having enriched themselves on the 
spoils and plunder of war, will no longer remain quietly under 
the taxation of their stolen property, which may not be so read- 
ily convertible into bonds. 

The soldiers who fought longest and hardest in battle, will 
scarcely accept perpetual bondage to pay the untaxed bondholder 
as a boon in compensation for his risk of life in the terrible 
struggles of the army. The same bold spirit which led him to 
the war, and defied danger at the cannon's mouth, will meet the 
untitled monied aristocracy of the country, and demand the 
emancipation of labor from the relentless grip of capital. The 
cry will become general, and no one will hear it sooner, or feel 
its piercing shrieks with more terror, than the bondholders who 
are drawing quadruple compounded interest on their bonds and 
bank stock. 

AVhen the panic comes, and come It must, the bondholders 
will sell out their bonds, or cast them upon the market. Dej)re- 
ciation will be the prelude of repudiation. When the bonds 
have gone down, there is nothing left for tiie banks to command 
a dollar upon, and this is repudiation itself. 



CKIMES OF THE CIVIL. WAK. 275 



BOOIC TmiE^ID. 



CHAPTER I. 

Usury. 

THE OFFSPRING OF PUBLIC DEBT AND BANKING. AN EN- 

QUJUY INTO THE CAUSES OF THE FINANCIAL DISTllESS 

WHICH NOW PEKVADES THE COUNTRY. 

"When the most beautiful country is deserted by men in search 
of homes in less inviting lauds, when the richest land goes beg- 
ging for tenants, and its soil is choking with weeds where corn 
ought to grow, when the taxes of the people in a simple form of 
government in time of peace, are so burdensome that the best 
citizens are preparing a voluntary confiscation of their property, 
and from necessity suffering it to go to sale for the payment of 
taxes and trivial debts, when sheriifs' sales are exposing to sac- 
rifice the property of the honest, industrious, producing classes, 
until the value of all property is merely nominal, — it is eminently 
proper to inquire after the causes of this extraordinary condition 
of things, and carefully apply the remedy. 

The cause is embraced in this brief sentence ; capi- 

ITAL HAS assumed TO PLACE A YOKE UPON THE NECK OF 
LABOR, AND LABOR HAS TAMELY SUBMITTED TO THE INDIG- 
NITY. 

In this Republican Government, money is A king which 

CAN DO NO WRONG. 

Money assumes the prerogative of ruling the country and de- 
fying the laws of the land. 

It walks boldly, into the legislative halls and arrogates all of 
the rights, powers, and immunities of supreme Lawgiver. Money 
has laid under tribute the labor and property of the country, 



276 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

controls public interests and public men. No class of the people 
receive legislative consideration, except money brokers and paper 
shavers. 

Shylocks, who have been the opprobrium and derision of the 
civilized world in all ages, feared by the poor, detested by the 
rich and despised by all men, are now with an air of respecta- 
bility, intruding themselves into courts of justice, invoking the 
strong arm of the law to enforce their fraudulent contracts, and 
give reputabil'ity to a business outlawed. Grave teachers in 
Israel are engaged in money-broking and demand usury at the 
hands of their flocks. 

Literary and eleemosynary institutions, built by money Avrung 
from the hard earnings of the laboring masses by oppressive tax- 
ation, are made the pretexts for scandalous speculations on public 
money and heartless speculations upon individual necessities, by 
unscrupulous men in the promotion of their private business. 

The evils of usury, one of the odious forms in which capital 
makes war upon labor, is felt in every branch of business, in ar- 
resting its action in every avocation of life, thwarting its legiti- 
mate purpose. 

It is proposed to examine the rights of labor over capital, 
the rights of property which are assailed by money unrestrained 
by usury laws. 

The following proposition is submitted as the basis of our ar- 
gument : All capital is nothing more than the super addition of 
labor, either mental or j)hysical, to the great gifts of God, which 
have been bestowed in common -upon mankind, and loJdch by na- 
ture, no man can have an absolute but merely an usufructuary 
right of property. 

This proposition is so plain as to commend itself without illus- 
tration. Kings who claim to rule the world by virtue of the 
grace of God, also claim a hereditary property in the soil, man, 
labor and all. But the success of our government will explode 
this traditional nonsense. Capital is nothing which labor has 
not made it. A more perfect representation of a splendid poverty 
is not within the range of human imagination, than that of our 
first parents, who were degraded from the spontaneous living be- 
stowed upon them by their Maker, to the empty title of great 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 277 

wealth which was bestowed upon them, upon the condition that 
they should labor for it. 

As solitary strangers on a virgin planet, they could look out 
upon all the vast wealth, its mountains of gold, its oceans offish, 
its broad plains of inexhaustible riches, sufficient for the support 
of endless generations of their posterity ; the herds of the fields, 
the beasts of the forest, the fowls of the air. the fruits of the 
tropics, the sweet, pure waters yet undisturbed by the convul- 
sions of the deluge, were all theirs. But in the abundance of 
the earth, Adam and his newly created bride could reduce noth- 
ing into possession without industry. They had, therefore, to go 
to work and receive their daily bread under the restriction of the 
inexorable law of their Creator, " in the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat thy bread till thou return unto the ground." From the 
day of Adam's abandonment of the garden of Eden until now 
the laws of production have been the same. They are unchange- 
ably eternal. No man can make an honest living without labor; 
that labor which either originates or gives a new form to some- 
thing else, which in its original state was without value or which 
increases its present value. 

Here comes the true distinction between making money 
and TAKING MONEY. He who adds wealth to the world in 
more than an equal amount to that which he appproriates to 
himself, Is a maker of money. He who aj)propriates to himself 
wealth, for which society has received no equivalent, is a taker 
of money, and that wealth is the property of some one else, who 
had j)roduced it and by his labor has made it a part of the com- 
mon stock of the wealth of society. It matters not that the 
producer cannot be identified among the millions of the earth ; 
the ownership is precisely the same as where the owner has lost 
his watch, which was found, and by a singular misfortune, the 
loser and finder were strangers to each other, though each is sen- 
sible of his relative loss and gain. 

The one knows he has found that which was not his own, and 
the other is confident that he lost that wdiich was his own. Though 
the loss may not be repaired, it is still the same. Capital cannot 
labor, nor can It produce anything except under the direction of 
the intelligent laborer, to whom society is indebted for every thing 



278 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

which it enjoys. Whatever exists, is the production of labor 
and of God. Whoever does not labor, produces nothing ; and 
if he lives at all, is the consumer of other men's labor and is a 
thief upon the Avealth of society. This is true of all mere capi- 
talists, who are consumers, but produce nothing. 

Human rights have no greater enemy than those who live upon 
the products of money loaned upon usury, cormorants who (j[uench 
their thirst witli draughts of the life-blood of labor. 

AVHAT IS MONEY? OF THE NATURE AND USES OF MONEY? 

It is impossible in the nature of things that any one man 
should produce everything necessary to his convenience, comfort 
and luxury. 

It is quite as difficult to suppose a condition of things in which 
by mere barter, the different members of a community should 
entirely accommodate their mutual wants. It is utterly impos- 
sible that even nations should produce all of the varied luxuries 
of life, which are offsprings of such varied climates, soils and 
circumstances. Then how shall one nation procure the products 
of another nation with which it has nothing to exchange ? for in 
this case barter, which is used to accommodate society and in- 
dividuals, fails to meet the wants of the nation from which it has 
to import, but which has nothing to export in return. 

To remedy this evil, there is but one plan which can obviate 
universal inconvenience in exchange, and that is, to measure the 
value and worth of the product, and give to that value a repre- 
sentative measure which will command a like value in some other 
place, or, if possible, in every other place. By thi's means the 
value may be measured everywhere, and no loss sustained by 
change of location. For this purpose, all civilized nations have 
established certain measures which they denominate money. 
Some nations employ one article as money ; other nations employ 
something else. For the purpose of exchange and transfer, the 
Spartans used iron. The ancient Mexicans employed cacao. 

Barbarous nations used various measures or standards by 
which the worth of houses, lands, cattle, and everything else 
was measured, in the character, value, substance, quantity, and 
material of their money. People have differed as much as in 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL. WAR. 279 

their civilization, arts, arms, science, literature and religion, until 
a general intercourse of civilized nations made it necessary that 
a common substance should represent the value of the different 
commodities used in common among them. 

This substance is designated by law as money ; not by com- 
mon consent or custom merely, but by positive law. Gold and 
silver have been adopted as the material out of which money 
shall be made. But gold and silver difll'er as much in their 
relative values, forms, sizes, figures and shapes, as do the 
measurements of weights, superficial or solid measures of other 
substances. But all of these differences are dependent upon the 
statutory law of the several countries which determine them. 
There can be nothing less equivocal than that money is the crea- 
ture of law, without any intrinsic value as money, except just 
what the law invests it with. The law determines what shall 
be money — and herein lies the great power of money, that its 
value is so determined by legislation, that every piece bears on 
its face the precise value which it will represent at every counter, 
and the amount of credit to which it will be entitled in every 
court of justice. The law not only determines the value of 
money, but it determines what shall be the specific substance of 
money to the exclusion of everything else whatever. In the 
phraseology of the Constitution of the United States, " no State 
* * * * shall make anything but gold and silver coin 
a tender in payment of debt." And every government exer- 
cises a like authority, and determines what shall be the ex- 
act value per ounce penny weight and grain of the several metals 
which are used as money, and change these regulations from time 
to time, as it may, in is discretion, see proper. But the power of 
creating money is one with which no other person or power than the 
government can be invested. The government declares in what 
quantities silver may be paid, and in what sums gold may be de- 
manded by the creditor of the debtor. And to these declarations 
of law must the debtor submit without discretion. 

Money has no competitor and can have no substitute. By 
legislation, money is made monarch of commerce, banking, 
manufacturing, agriculture. It is as safe for the liberties of the 
people to allow monarchy to rule without restraint, as it is for 



280 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

the business of the country to allow money to exact interest with- 
out restraint. Independent of this legal value of gold and silver 
would be a mere matter of commerce ; and in times of financial 
distress, would be a comparatively worthless one as are gold 
rings, gold watches, silver trinkets, &c. It would be uncandid 
in an investigation of this kind not to give the opj^osite view of 
this subject, by the two greatest writers upon political economy, 
of the free trade school, Jean Baptiste Say and Dr. Francis 
Way land. 

The views of these gentlemen are entirely similar. I there- 
fore prefer to give those of the elder writer, Mr. Say, wlio says, 
"I have referred to custom and not to authority of government, 
the choice of the particular article that is to act as money in 
preference to every other." In answer to Mr. Say, it may be 
said, "with great propriety, that in a country where there is no 
credits, if such a civilized country there can be, it Avould be of 
small importance, indeed, whether or not there was coined money, 
or any other legal tender ; for the people, then in their bartering, 
could make exchanges of such articles as the one may need and 
the other have for sale. 

But the law has left no such discretion when future payment 
is to be made. Where the law has not sj)ecifically said what 
shall be the measure of value and how a debt shall be paid, it 
has inferred, and by construction of law, that for all debts, 
where the contract does not positively provide for some other 
payment, the creditors will demand gold and silver. And when 
the chaif is blown away, the sum and substance, that is the truth 
of Mr. Say's and Dr. Way land's theory, is this, — that wliere men 
choose to trade horses, or barter other articles, the law docs not 
interfere. But it is not true that uj^on any contract, the payment 
of money due is to be referred to custom ; but it is the positive 
demand of the law which will fully enforce its claims. 

But the great use of money is not only as a measure of the 
present value of other articles in trade, but its chief purpose is 
as a standard measure of value, months and even years hence ; 
and the very agreement to pay such contract in such money, is 
based upon the universal recognition of the legal standard coin 
of gold and silver, as determined by the government. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 281 

In contracts to be filled in the future, everything is referred 
to this omnipotence of the law, in making and determining the 
value of money. 

MONEY IS NOT MERCHANDIZE, BUT A MEASURE OF MER- 
CHANDIZE. 

Money is a measure of value ; as such it bears precisely the 
same general relation to the determination of value in all com- 
modities, that the yard-stick bears to the measure of cloth, that 
the bushel bears to the measure of grain, that the acre bears to 
the measure of land, and the stone, hundred, or ton, bears to the 
determination of weights. In each of these various measures, 
the law fixes their size and makes them just what they are, and 
by that legal adjustment, the amount due on a contract is deter- 
mined, where weight or measure is stipulated for. This argu- 
ment is but a practical truth which cannot be called in question. 
A dollar in value is as clear an expression and as universally 
understood as is a yard of cloth, a bushel of wheat, a ton of hay, 
or any other similar expression. 

Mr. Say, however, holds that, " money is not a measure, be- 
cause it has an intrinsic value." It is true that gold and silver, 
lampblack and rags, have an intrinsic value, but they certainly 
have no such value as in anywise corresponds with the intrinsic 
value with which they have been invested by the positive au- 
thority of law, which confers upon them the despotic power of 
money. 

But having an intrinsic value as metal, is certainly not a good 
reason why gold and silver made into money, may not neverthe- 
less be a measure. 

There is an intrinsic value in the wood of which the yard- 
stick is made, and the additional labor put upon it, is equal to that 
much timber in any other form, or in anything else. Yet as a 
measure of cloth, it is a standard ; and no difference what the 
fluctuation may be in the monetary value of the cloth, the yard^ 
stick is the unchangeable measure of quantity, because the law 
has established it, and the yard-stick alone can determine the 
amount in measure to be settled in legal contest. 

The same is true of the material and labor used in making all 



282 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



other weights and measures, and is true of all the coins, and pa- 
per money authorized and established by law as money, for the 
circulating medium of exchange. 

But in no weight, measure, coin or paper money, are the in- 
trinsic and extrinsic values the same, or nearly the same. 

Nature and the ordinary uses to which they are applied, gives 
to the various metals, wood and paper, &c., their intrinsic value. 
Their extrinsic value as money is given them by positive law, 
which appoints to them their uses, and communicates to them a 
corresponding value. 

In this light does the law treat these weights, measures, and 
coins; and for the change of a standard measure, the alteration 
of a standard weight, the mutilation, corruption, or counterfeit- 
ing coin of the Government, the forging or counterfeiting of the 
current paper of the country, the offenders are punishable by 
law, and the offences classed together. 

Measures, M'cights and coins are justly classed together by law- 
givers and historians, sacred and profane. The corruption of 
these standards is an offence in each case, alike punishable. Each 
is the creature of law for a specific purpose. Money is a meas- 
ure of value, nothing more. 

THE GREAT POWER OF MONEY. 

I shall quote from Mr. Say, who says with peculiar emphasis : 
" I have referred to custom, and not to the authority of govern- 
ment, the choice of the particular article that is to act as money 
in preference to every other ; for though a government may coin 
what it pleases to call crowns, it does not oblige the subject to 
give his goods in exchange for these crowns, at least not where 
property is at all respected." 

In some impracticable sense, as a purely visionary theory, this 
may reflect the mere shadow of truth, but is not practically true. 
The Government compels men to take gold and silver (and in 
this country unlawfully, even paper promises to pay,) coin in 
payment of debts. If Mr. Say were to sell his lands in barter 
fur houses, and the vendees were to fliil to make the due ex- 
change of property, the law wouW unquestionably compel him 
to take crowns, eagles, or some other gold and silver coin, equiv- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 283 

aleiit according to the Government standard of the value of the 
property delinquent in the trade. 

It is from government that the specific value of money and 
supreme power is derived by which it makes commerce and men 
its obsequious servants. 

Again Mr, Say observes: " Custom, therefore, and not the 
mandate of authority, designates the specific product that shall 
pass for money exchisively, whether crown pieces or any other 
commodity wluitever." 

Mr. Say's " therefore " is logical nonsense, and is without foun- 
dation either in fact or constitutional law, and is another instance 
of the length to which a dreaming theorist will go in the face of 
experience and the well-settled facts of life. 

Eut as a ruinous offset to Mr. Say's " therefore,^' he admits 
that it is the use of gold and silver as coin that gives to the ma- 
terial its principal value as metal ; and, of course, its extrinsic 
value as money; and of consequence its great j^ovver, which it 
receives from the law. 

Of paper money, bank notes, &c., there cannot be so much as 
the appearance of money, except what it derives from the law 
which gives to it tlie representative character of money. 

Indejiendent of law, there is no money ; by law anything may 
be declared money ; and money is the king of commerce. 

The power of money is never so apparent as when it brings 
the exacting creditor in domination over the unfortunate debtor. 
Here money commands ; every kind of merchandize obeys its 
mandate. 

As a consequence, to pay debts, executions are issued, which 
must be satisfied in money, and here the power of money is abso- 
lute. This power of the creditor over the debtor is enormous. 

For though it be necessary that one hundred fold should be 
sold of any other property to secure the gold and silver, the 
property must be sacrificed to satisfy the claims of the law in 
the payment of the debt. The scarcity of money, the unhappy 
condition of the property for sale in the demands of the law for 
gold and silver, are of no consideration whatever. The legal 
execution demands the money in the payment of the debts, and 
no loss of the debtor meets with any allowance at the hand of 



284 CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 

the creditor. The gold and silver must be paid, because tbe law 
declares it. 

The law interposes its strong arm to assist the creditor to get 
a certain sum, bearing the stamp of government coin, and it 
compels the debtor to pay that sum in that coin. It was for tliis 
very purpose that gold and silver were bought and coined to ac- 
commodate the people. So great is tlie power of money, that if 
A owes B ^1,000, for the payment of that amount of money B 
may have $1,000 in cattle, ^1,000 in grain, $1,000 in land sacri- 
ficed to pay the $1,000 in money; if, owing, however, to the pe- 
culiar circumstances of trade and commerce, this great sacrifice 
of property should at public sale realize only $500 in gold and 
silver, the creditor who may have bought the $3000 worth of 
property for the $500, still holds a judgment of $500 against 
the debtor upon the unsatisfied execution, and may have to 
sacrifice another $3,000, or any amount of property necessary to 
secure the amount of the remaining $500 in gold and silver. 
Such is the supreme power of money over any mere commodity, 
and such is the specific power conferred upon it by the govern- 
ment, — a power conferred upon no merchandize, but yet a power 
essential to the existence of money. 

A most shallow fallacy of the brokers is this : that money is 
like any other article of commerce, and ought to be free; and 
the holder should be allowed to sell it for the same that he sells 
any other article of trade or commerce. 

In this brief, false sentence, lies the kernel of the argument of 
the usurers. 

If the law had left other articles of commerce as free as money, 
then might the argument have some force, but the law first in- 
terfered to destroy the equality of money and merchandize, 
which, in the nature of things, originally existed. 

Now, if the same law which provides that gold and silver be 
assayed and coined, and their legal value stamped upon them, 
had also appointed appraisers of corn, wheat, horses, cattle, 
sheep, land, houses, &c., to give them a fixed and definite value 
in the payment of debts, at which value they were to pass cur- 
rent, then the value of gold and. silver with other articles would 
have been upon a level, and each article of commerce could have 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 285 

gone into the market \vithont embarrassment of legal preference. 
But this was not done. Gold was then valued, and all other 
property must be sacrificed to meet that value. So sensibly 
have the financiers of the different States of the Union felt the 
inequality of money with otiier forms of wealth, that in finan- 
cial distress, stay laws have been enacted to atone for the crime 
of usury, and appraisement laws have been passed to give all 
merchandize its relative value in the hands of the law of the 
individual State, which gold and silver and coin have by the 
positive laws of the General Government. The absolute power 
of money over merchandize is graphically set forth in the fol- 
lowing extract from a message of Governor Wise to the Virginia 
Legislature : 

" The assumptions that money is merchandize, and that money 
is made scarce on account of the usury laws, are not only false 
positions, but they are preposterous absurdities." 

Money exists only by legislation. Merchandize is the product 
of individual labor, or of private enterprize. Money is the legal 
standard by which value is measured. Merchandize is that 
which is valued by the aid of this standard. Money, as such, 
has no intrinsic value. Merchandize is sought for only on ac- 
count of its intrinsic value. Money is perpetual in its nature, 
and is designed for all time. Merchandize is temporary, and 
adapted to special wants, and made for wear or consumption. 
Money is concentrative — centering in the keeping of the few. 
Merchandize is diffusive, being required and consumed by many. 
Money is a legal certificate of value, and is transferable for what 
it represents. Merchandize is the thing valued for what it is, or 
its uses. If money were merchandize, as money, then a yard- 
stick would be merchandize as a measure, and the cloths would 
measure the yard-stick, as much as the yard-stick measures the 
cloth. If money be merchandize, and a law is passed to make 
it so, then all merchandize should be made by law money, which 
would be a literal destruction of the invention of money. 

Wliatever commodity be selected to serve as money, is invested 
with a special power, and it is the greatest power conferred by 
the Government. The proposition that because a man possesses 
the legal right to demand what he pleases for his land, his mer- 



286 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

cliandize, and all other property, that therefore he ought to be 
authorized to ask and receive what he pleases for liis money — • 
that because the free-trade principle prevails beneficially in rela- 
tion to all other subjects of property, therefore it would operate 
beneficially in relation to money — is a proposition to confer upon 
money all of the privileges, as to terms, that belong to merchan- 
dize. A. owns horses, and houses and money. By law he can let 
his horses and houses for whatever he can obtain. Why should 
he not have the same power to get as much as he can for his 
money ? The substance of the answer which I should give to 
this merely popular and plausible argument is this : — if this ar- 
gument, which proceeds from the creditor's side of the house, could 
be so modified as to place money on a level, in all respects, with 
merchandize or other property, no rational man would object to 
the change. But they do not propose equality of function and 
power. They do not mean to equalize the powers of money and 
merchandize. The creditor says : — I ought to have the privilege 
of using my money as merchandize, to obtain the most I can for 
its use. Very well. But if money is to have all of the privi- 
leges of merchandize, then merchandize should have all of the 
privileges of money. If they are put on a level as to the use 
of the creditor, they should be put on a level as to the use of 
the debtor. But will the creditor consent that land or a bale of 
goods shall be made a tender in payment of his debts ? Why 
not ? If one is as much an article of trade as the other, they 
should be treated alike in all respects. It was not the design of 
the law so to treat them. The same law which gives to the 
creditor the power of refusing everything but gold and silver in 
the payment of his debt, ought to fix the value of that gold and 
silver. But by this new theory the creditor is not only entitled 
to refuse everything but gold and silver, but to be the judge of 
its value ; or, in other w'ords, to demand what he pleases by the 
way of interest. 

To be consistent, the law whifch confers greater privileges upon 
money than upon merchandize, should also impose upon it 
greater restraints. 

If they, therefore, propose to destroy this preeminence of 
money, so far as regards its use by the creditor, they should des- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 287 

stroy it so far as regards its use by tlie debtor. But v/hat they 
do propose is, to extend the privilege of the creditor, in fixing 
tlie vahie of his money, but not to extend the privileges of the 
debtor in the use of his merchandize. If money is to be treated 
as merchandize by the creditor, merchandize should be treated as 
money by the debtor. But to treat money as merchandize, to 
give to the creditor the power of asking what he pleases for its 
use, is a desecration of its original and sole design. It was crea- 
ted by government as a test of value, as a medium of exchange. 
It stands as a boundary tree in the forest; neither adjoining 
owner has a right to use it for any other purpose. It derives all 
its value from government, and government alone ought to fix its 
value. Money pays a debt at the Avill of the debtor, but law 
recognizes no such power in merchandize. Money has a mini- 
mum and maximum power according to law, otherwise it could 
not be a standard of value with any more consistency, than gov- 
ernment can authorize unlimited yard-sticks or unlimited bush- 
els ; but prices of merchandize fluctuate, and in relation to the 
legal standard, according to demand and supply. Money is the 
instrument of exchange, of settlement among traders. Merchan- 
dize is the stock in trade to be exchanged. INIoney is authorized 
by law for convenience, not profit; merchandize is produced by 
the labor of the people, and for profit. Money as merchandize, 
ceases to be money ; merchandize as money no where exists ex- 
cept by legislation. 

Money exists only as a relative agent for measuring the value 
of other things ; merchandize is prized for what it is itself. 
Money is an agent to promote want, merchandize supplies want. 
Money saves labor, merchandize sustains it. Money makes the 
price, merchandize pays it. Money is borrowed and loaned, 
merchandize is bought and sold. Whatever may be said to the 
contrary, these fundamental distinctions are universally acknowl- 
edged ; for while people are content to borrow money on special 
terms of security, all are earnest to sell merchandize on credit 
and without security. Purchasers of merchandize are politely 
and urgently solicited to buy, while borrowers of money are cere- 
moniously permitted to make their propositions. As all pro- 
ducts designed for use, or ornament, or consumption, are to be 



288 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

weighed, measured, tested or valued, the governments of all na- 
tions prescribe by law the means, and hence, we have weights, 
measures, tests and money so ordered, that all may understand 
their uses and render them available at the least possible ex- 
pense. Such instruments, designed by government for the con- 
venience of the people, require the protecting power of the most 
stringent laws. 

MONEY IS ■THE PROPERTY OF THE GOVERNMENT FROM WHICH 
IT RECEIVES ALL ITS POWERS, AND IT IS THE DUTY OF THE 
GOVERNMENT TO RESTRAIN THOSE POWERS BY USURY LAWS. 

There must always be made in the discussion of questions 
in political economy, as there is in the nature of things a clear 
distinction between the property which a man has by virtue of 
his own right and the property with wliich he is invested by a 
public franchise, or office. • 

The first is inherent, and according to the fundamental prin- 
ciples of our government and institutions, indefeasible. The 
other is purely conventional and derivative from the govern- 
ment dependent upon it, and may be either perpetuated or de- 
stroyed by it. 

Of the classes of public franchise or public property created 
for private use, in which men have no real, but a usufructuary 
right of property, there are many, but this one general charac- 
ter they all have in common. They are the creatures of Law, 
and can claim no higher origin than Statute Law ; in it they 
live, and move and have their being, and it is a great perver- 
sion of those sacred principles which lie at the foundation of all 
law and all government, and the Constitutional rights of men, 
to confound these franchises with that absolute property which 
every man, by nature, has a right to — in the fruits of the land 
planted by his own hands — in wild beasts subdued by his own 
powers — in tame animals raised by his own industry — in all 
the legitimate fruits of his own labor. 

Of these mere creatures of the law, we may enumerate but a 
few of the classes which are rather inconveniences of society 
than the rights of any individual. Of these are, 

1. All weights, measures, and standards of every kind. 



CKIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 289 

2. All ferries, highways, bridges, and public buildings. 

3. All offices, ministerial, judicial and executive. 

In the first class, we very justly place money, which is, as has 
been proven above, the measure of value, as it is ascribed to 
every species of property. 

The legitimate use of money is entirely analogous to public 
franchises, which derive their entire power from legislation; and 
because the law has invested them with power which by abuse, 
might become the source of a grievous public annoyance. The 
law, with great wusdom and justice, restrains their power to abuse 
their trust and prevent that which was intended as a public con- 
venience, from being employed as the pretext and machinery of 
private robbery. 

Of this class of franchises, I choose for illustration the Ferry, 
whose rates of charges are fixed by law, because their special 
license prevents competition and divests the public of its right 
of choice of common carriers ; and of consequence leaves to the 
discretion of the Ferryman what the rate of his conveyance may 
be, and unless restricted by law, would be a source of public op- 
pression. 

Hacks, licensed by city authorities, are for the same reason 
subjected to the same law of rates and charges. Since their busi- 
ness is created by law, the law has a right to regulate its powers. 
The lists might be extended, but enough for the purpose has 
been adduced. 

Public offices, which are created by law for the same reason, 
are restrained by law in the receipt of fees to a stipulated sum, 
for the very just reason that the law which gives compensation at 
all, has the indisputable right to say how much that compensa- 
tion shall be. Otherwise public officers would be but instru- 
ments and engines of despotism. 

So, money which is made by the law, for purposes of com- 
merce merely, is very properly restrained in the amount of inter- 
est which it may demand. Otherwise, money which was made 
as the measure of the value of merchandize, becomes the pretext 
of Its universal sacrifice and depreciation, if not its destruction. 

Money is the same kind of property vested in the government 
as are highways, offices and other franchises of a similar charac- 
19 



290 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

ter. And tlie government has precisely the same right to control, 
direct and restrain the one, as it has to govern the other. 

The analogies between these franchises are natural and striking. 
Money is very properly likened to a highway in which every 
man has a usufructuary interest, but in which no man has an 
exclusive riglit. The analogy of the power of creation and reg- 
ulation is complete. 

Tiie higliway, not without intrinsic value for purposes of agri- 
culture, in its appropriation to the public service, becomes essen- 
tial to the prosecution of the business and enjoyment of the people, 
and indisj>ensable to the transportation of the country. On the 
other liand, gold and silver have an intrinsic value, but when 
made into money they are absolutely necessary to tlie existence 
of commerce — they are both the creatures of law; each is made 
under the direction of, and supported by law. As the government 
taxes the people for the coining of money, so the people are taxed 
to keep up the highway, that no man dare obstruct it. And in 
every civilized country the circulation of money is most carefully 
guarded from obstruction. The interest which every man has in 
the unobstructed highway and the free circulation of a sound 
currency, is personal as well as public. If the highway be ob- 
structed, the necessary comforts and luxuries of life which are 
borne upon it, are clieaper or dearer, just as it is obstructed or 
free from obstruction. Precisely the same effect is produced in 
making it difficult to obtain the same articles by the obstruction 
of the circulation of money. 

Who will pretend that it is not the duty of the government, 
which builds the highway for the public at the public expense, 
to protect the pul)lic in the enjoyment of it against nuisances of 
every kind ? AVhat would be the public feeling if any man 
should presume, contrary to the law, to gather toll of travellers 
for his ov/n ]>crsonal use? But suppose some man should ob- 
struct the road permanently, that he might hire his own team to 
assist travellers to pass by his own house and thereby secure to 
himself enormous fees for his labor; would society tolerate it? 
Could any law give protection to such marauders? But money 
is no more than a highway. Like it, it is made by lav/ for the 
use of the people. Just as the obstruction of the public highway 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 291 

aifects every traveler, so does tlie obstruction of the circulation 
of the currency of a country affect every man. But it especially 
affects the poor who are dependent on money to procure their 
daily bread, their raiment, their house-rent and their fuel. To 
obstruct the free circulation of money by usury, is a refined 
method of Political Economy for starving and enslaving the 
poorer classes, which they feel, as though it were positively done 
by law. But this state of things is induced by the prevalence 
of usury. Money serves the same purpose in the commercial 
world, which a public officer does in the administration of law. 
Money bears precisely the same relation to the commerce of 
the country which a Judge bears to the administration of justice 
The obstruction of justice by bribery is precisely the same kind 
of offence as the obstruction of commerce by usury. What would 
be the condition of the country when a Judge could be hired for 
the individual purposes of a man who chanced to have a suit in 
court? And what must be the commercial condition of the 
country when the medium of circulation is turned from its legiti- 
mate purposes by brokers, usurers and paper-shavers ? But how 
much more deplorable is the evil, when the currency is turned 
from the general purposes of business and is made subservient to 
the oppression of the poor, the affliction of the unfortunate, and 
the general ruin of the country ? Can any country long survive 
such enormous wrongs? The money of the country may be 
properly compared to the blood of the physical system, without 
which the limbs would be powerless. Any obstruction in the 
circulation of the blood seriously and dangerously affects the 
health, producing palsy in the limbs, or apoplexy in the brain. 
This indeed is a true picture of our country at the present time, 
which is paralyzed in all its extremities with festering corrup- 
tion, and apoplexy in all the great centres of trade. Just as 
blood is the lile of the man and a regulator of the health, and a 
distributor of vitality to every part of the system, so is money to 
commerce and business of every kind. Now wdien the same 
power is given by law to other property in commanding a posi- 
tive value in the payment of debts which is now given to gold 
.and silver coin for the same purpose, then may all usury laws 
cease to be a necessary protection against the dangerous power of 



292 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

money, but not until then woultl it be just, or rio;ht, or good 
policy, or safe to repeal the usury laws of the country, or leave 
the immense power of money without any restraint. 

It will be conceded by every practical man, that money is a 
necessary medium of exchange, that its power as a measure of 
value is an essential element of the money itself. 

But since the power given it by the Government, as money, 
is the source of its own positive value, which, when unrestrained, 
becomes monstrous, it is the duty of the Government to remove 
every possible obstruction in their power to its free circulation, 
so that as the blood in the human body imparts life to all the ex- 
tremities, money, as a circulating medium, shall pass as a measure 
of exchange and value of commerce to every part of community, 
discharging its offices as the financial servant of the people in 
every department of business, imparting vitality to the commerce 
of the whole country. 

To effect tliis purpose it is necessary that the rate of interest 
be so regulated by law that it will be to the advantnge of all men 
not to retain money as a fluctuating commodity, but to use it as 
a standard measure of the value of other things Avhich they may 
purchase with it. 

What would, be the skill and science of the physician who 
would recommend a system of health based upon the theory that 
the vitality M'ould be as perfect when the blood is obstructed, and 
cannot circulate through the human body as Avhen it was unob- 
structed and free? But precisely such a political economist is he 
who recommends obstructions to the free circulation of money, 
by allowing enormous rates of interest, or what is the same, op- 
poses the arrest of the great wrong of usury. 

The money of the country is essential to tlie transaction of its 
business. No trade can be carried on without money. The mer- 
chant must have money to buy his goods, the manufacturer to 
pay his hands and to purchase the raw material, and ihe daily 
laborer to buy his daily bread. If they cannot obtain money, 
their business must stop at once. 

When the consumers cease to be employed and have not money, 
then must the farmer lose his market, and with that comes a gen- 
eral stagnation of legitimate business, and ruin follows in its 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 293 

train everywhere^ since no business can be carried on without 
money. 

In sucli a state of things hard times necessarily ensue, just 
such times as are felt by the people everywhere; felt in every 
business ; felt by everybody except by those enemies of trade, the 
usurers, who exact an exorbitant interest, just in proportion as it 
becomes impossible to pay money at all. 

The next question which presents itself is, can the various 
classes who have no money, relieve themselves by applying to 
these brokers or usurers? To this we answer most positively, 
they cannot. There is no business in prosperous times that can 
be hone.^tly carried on by paying twenty-five per cent, on the 
capital invested. 

Nay, ten per cent, after duly requiting the laborer and not im- 
posing on the consumer, is a ruinous tariif. Indeed six per cent. 
is a very high interest in any legitimate business. If the busi- 
ness of a country be ruined, the laborer will go where he can find 
employment, the manufacturer where he can carry on his busi- 
ness with liealth and success ; the mechanic where the increase 
of population demands his labor and skill, or in other words, the 
whole producing power of the State removes from the place 
where the channels of commerce are obstructed by usury, to where 
the people are protected by laws from the power of money in the 
hands of the holders, just as ships or vessels leave the obstructed 
rivers or seas where pirates roam at large, for seas whose waters 
are unobstructed, and on whose waves they may safely sail with- 
out hindrance. 

The vast emigration from the country cannot fail to affect the 
Southern States in its numerical strength, military force, and i)ro- 
ductive capacity. We might amplify our illustrations, were it 
necessary. A prostrate State with languishing business, ruined 
trade, and a population Avho are offering their homesteads for sale, 
while thousands are actually abandoning the farms on which they 
first settled, in consequence of the paralyzed condition of every 
kind of business, attest the truth of all that has been set forth. 
The specific cause will be carefully examined in another place. 

One of the great objections to all usurious contracts, is that the 
parties to such contracts do not meet upon an equality as in the 
transaction of other business. 



294 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

The most ready method of determining the question whether 
they do meet upon terms of equality, is to consider who are the 
borrowers of money. 

Who are the borrowers of money? Men who, if they had the 
means, would gladly pay their debts, but who cannot sell their 
farms, or even their homesteads for money, for the money is in 
the hands of men who propose to use it only as an instrument of 
oppression to grind the faces of the poor ; men who choose to 
buy other men's farms at public sale at a discount of seventy- 
five per cent, upon the recognized market value. These usurers 
having by mortgages and in other ways involved a very large 
proportion of the whole people in their meshes, have no disposi- 
tion to pay a fair and honest value for property when they can 
so readily sacrifice it, gain possession of it, hold the obligation 
of their victim — and hold him a slave for life ; or until the debt is 
paid, cause him to be annoyed by duns, notices and executions 
through usury, long after the original debt has been discharged. 
There is one class of borrowers who would, if possible, relieve 
themselves from the toils of other usurers, but in doing this, find 
themselves only changing their oppressors, — relentless masters. 
Do tliese men meet as equals in the transactions of their busi- 
ness? Is not the borrower in duress and at the will of the len- 
der? Indeed, the usurer will boastingly say of his victim: "It 
was tlie best he could do ; he had to do this or do worse." 

Another class of borrowers are suggested in this connection; 
men who were sufferers in a general calamity — who were des- 
titute in a wide-spread famine; farmers who had no wheat with 
which to seed their lands, nor money left to buy it. These men 
call upon brokers to borrow money to buy seed-grain — the loan 
to be paid after harvest. The farmer must have seed-wheat or 
lose his summer's work and thus rob his family of their bread; 
and the broker, knowing the necessity of the farmer, takes 
advantage of it and loans him money at the very higiiest usury 
rates, in times of great financial distress. 

Were the parties in this transaction on an equality as contrac- 
tors? Was there no power of the oppressor here but what the 
oppressed could resist ? To all this the usurer, with unusual blaud- 
ncss, replies : " It is far better that the man should get his seed- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 295 

grain than to let his farm be idle and his family suffer from in- 
creasing want." 

All this may be true, but it is a fearful revelation of the utter 
destitution of moral principle in the bosom of the broker. Like 
all other men who live by plunder, he limits his right to exact 
only by the capacity of his victim to endure. He would sell 
him as a slave, or take his life, could he thus secure his usury, 
but for the interposition of the law. And he will continue to 
perpetrate this robbery until the same law which protects his 
liberty and his life, interferes to protect his property. 

But among otlier borrowers, are men thrown out of employ- 
ment who are unable to earn their daily bread. The money- 
holder will not bring under cultivation his wild land to give 
employment to the laborer. That would take money. He will 
not build houses, for that would reduce his capital. He will do 
nothing that employs labor for himself, or that will employ his 
money in legitimate trade or divert it from the channels of 
usury ; nor can any one else borrow it at these ruinous rates, to 
engage in any legitimate business which would give employment 
to laborers, artists or mechanics. To carry on a business under 
such circumstances, would be ruinous in the extreme. The re- 
sult is, the laboring man remains idle; his family must suffer 
from pinching want, and to get his daily bread, he nuisfc mort- 
gage his homestead or ^starve, beg, or steal. He has no other 
alternative. 

Again, the usurer who is "the mildest-mannered mnn that 
ever scuttled ship or cut a throat," will loan him money to buy 
his bread with real-estate for security, and with the most ])erfect 
sang froid say, '' I -pity the poor fellow; it was tlie very best 
thing; that he could do — and I accommodated him." 

Are the parties to the contract equal here? Is the borrower 
on a level with the lender? And how else than by a strict and 
penal usury, can the evil apparent be arrested ? AVliether is it 
better for the State to protect the industrious, who produce 
everything, from Avant or crime, or to protect usurers who pro- 
duce nothing, in the commission of the greatest crime known to 
political economy, the prostration of legitimate business, des- 
truction of the means of an honest subsistence — the poor pit- 
tance left to tiie laboring classes. 



296 CHIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR, 

There is another class of borrowers who, it is thought, ought 
to be more heavily taxed ; they are men to loan to whom it is 
dangerous, and because it is a great risk to loan to thern, we are 
told " that to exact usury of them, is right." 

The true theory iu tliis class of loans is this: The whole is 
a species of gambling which would not exist but for the extor- 
tion of usury tolerated by law. All civilized nations legislate 
against gambling, betting uj^on elections, the sale of lottery 
tickets, and all other gaming. AVhy, then, should we legislate 
against all bets or risks at stakes of money, and refuse to sup- 
press usury — the only argument for which is, that it may, when 
duly used, earn money from reckless speculators. If there were 
no other argument for the passage of usury laws, this one would 
be sufficient. 

Usury is made a pretext for reckless speculation and public 
gambling. It is frequently urged that sjjeculators borrow money, 
and are under obligation to pay usury, and the money loaner 
has a right to exact usury of him, because he is a speculator. 
The argument is badly founded, — for if usury be given by 
speculators, borrowers to pay debts will certainly not be able to 
get money at less rates, and, as a consequence, what is defended 
as a just punishment to adventurers, is only a badly-conceived 
defence of stock or other gambling, which falls with its full force 
upon the whole country, and most severely upon the productive 
class, beyond whose reach money is always placed in times of 
general distress. 

This very borrowing of money by speculators at ruinous rates, 
makes money so scarce at a fair commercial interest — diverting 
it from its legitimate purposes, so as to make it impossible that 
debtors can borrow it to pay their legitimate debts. 

The business of the country in the very nature of things, must 
be carried on by the laborer of the operatives, and the net profits 
must be distributed among the capitalists, the conductors of the 
manufactory and the daily laborer. If enormous profits are 
made, the consumer must pay them. But competition in a very 
short time, usually regulates any serious evil which may arise 
from this cause, and nothing -which is generally recognized as an 
article of commerce or trade, or which may be increased by the 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 297 

option of public industry, cau long remain the subject matter of 
monopoly. 

But, in the division of the net profits, the first claim that will 
be met is that of the capitalists, which is always secured by 
mortgage deeds of trusts, voluntary confessions of judgment, 
personal qr collateral securities of such character as makes the 
interest of the capitalist not only secure, but convertible into cash 
at pleasure, unless it be in times of extraordinary pressure The 
capitalist is well secured in his investment, when the nominal 
owner who has the remaining control of the effects and assets 
will, of course, secure to himself a lion's share of the net profits, 
and, as in every other contest between lalor and capital, labor 
has to yield an obedient neck to the yoke capital places upon 
her by the unfair legislation of the country. The operative has 
only one or other of these alternatives. He must either take 
the pittance which may be left after the division of the profits 
between the capitalist and the controller of his capital, or be 
driven from an honest employment to the destitute home of a 
hungry family who are dependent on his labor. 

Now, what in honesty and justice should be done to a fair dis- 
tribution of the profits of the manufactory ? Should not the 
laborer be first rewarded for his work; next the chief operator 
who takes supervision of the establishment ; and then, if anything 
be left, let it be given to the capital which neither toils nor spins. 
If capital refuses to contribute by its aid to the general vv'ork 
because it cannot enslave the laborer, then ought restrictions to 
be duly thrown around it to prevent money which was made for 
the public use from becoming an instrument of public oppres- 
sion ? This is thought to be an unanswerable argument against 
the enactment of all usury laws. 

BOTH PARTIES CONSENT TO THE USURIOUS BARGAIN. 

This would be no argument worthy of weight, even if it were 
true. That two criminals consent to a wrong in which one is a 
sufferer, is not a valid consent for the very highest of reasons, 
that the public good is involved and the public Government is 
interested in the protection of all her citizens in life, liberty and 



298 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

property. For this reason homestead exemption laws have been, 
passed, not merely for the specific protection of an individual, 
but for the protection of society itself against the aggressions of 
greedy and unscrupulous men who would utterly impoverish 
their fellow men only, that they may send them as mendicants to 
be supported at public expense. • 

For the same cause, also, laws are made against all crime, that 
the public may thereby be protected against bankruptcy and the 
people from pauperism. 

Adultery certainly is a crime, though both parties consent to 
its commission. And the law makes it punishable for the reason 
that society becomes the sufferer, since it has to make provision 
for the support of bastard children, for which pure citizens are 
taxed. Society has a higher claim in the vindication of her own 
character from scandal, which, if permitted, would degrade the 
morals and utterly bankrupt the public. It is of very little 
consequence that two criminals conspire against the peace, order 
and dignity of the State, and plead in justification of their guilt 
that they both consented, since it is their very consent that con- 
stitutes the essence or animus of their crime. 

So gambling of every kind is done by the consent of both 
parties. But here, very properly, tlie law interferes to arrest the 
crime and punish it;, for society itself is invaded, since in every 
instance of gain by one party and loss by the other, the relative 
ability of the loser to provide for himself and family is injured if 
not destroyed, and the chance that he will become a public charge 
is greatly augmented. What would a community of gamblers 
be but a community of paupers, sooner or later, to be supported 
by the public wealth drawn from the sweat of the faces of the 
producing or laboring classes ? But does this consent make the 
matter less a crime against the peace and honor of society ? or 
that even a majority agree to corrupt the fountains of morals, 
and grind w^ith taxes the only men who contribute to its real 
wealth, does this make the injury less ? 

In this case as in all others, it is the consent which constitutes 
the crime, and makes its less equivocal and more dajjgerous, be- 
cause more poM'erful. 

Duelling is done by consent of both parties. The mere consent 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 299 

of tv/0 men to commit a murder, is not a good reason for the 
permission of the crime, when the very essence of murder is that 
it M'iis done premeditatedly. 

Society does not choose to grant an immunity to men who cast 
a fearful ghiom upon her destiny, and have nothing to offer in 
palliation of their crimes, except impudent defiance of all law 
and audacious contempt for tiie rights of peaceable communities. 

Usury is done by the consent of both parties. But is that a 
reason why men should commit a great w'rong on society, ob- 
structing the business, labor and commerce of the country by 
gambling in the currency ? The consent of the parties only ag- 
gravates the crime of voluntarily disregarding the majesty of the 
law. 

We will now examine the question — Who are the parties 
consenting f Are they the same as the jjarties really interested 
in the illegal ti-ansaction ? They are not. The country is the 
first and a paramount party in all transactions affecting her own 
honor. The first great duty, and obligation, and debt due from 
every citizen is to the State, and without a proper regard to this 
obligation, there can be no law, no country, no society, no order 
no security. Has tiie State given her consent to any of the crimes 
to M'hich we have alluded ? Has she not prohibited them by 
positive law ? And can any man be said to give his consent to 
a transaction which, as a law-abiding citizen, he lias bound him- 
self not to do? The country has not consented to the crime of 
usury, and the laws of all civilized nations prohibit it. Every 
man's creditor, and his creditor and family, are bona fide parties 
to every transaction which in any wise may affect Jiis property and 
its products until their debts are liquidated. But do the creditors 
of men, as parties to the transactions of usury, give their consent 
to the ])ayment of usury to others, while the principal part of 
their honest debts remains unjiaid ? Surely su(;h consent not, to 
anything connected with the crime of usury. But the Almightij 
jtist, icisc, and good Creator, has made other parties to 
nearly every transaction of this kind. By His \V\&e providence, 
it is the imperious duty of all men to support their parents in 
old ago, to maintain their children in helpless infliiicy, to i)rotect 
and defend, to educate and enlighten them, to justly share their 



300 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WxVE. 

earnings and their interests with their Avives; and all of these 
parties have an indefeasible interest in the moral character and 
good name of the child, the father, the husband; therefore, the 
crimes of usury, duelling, gambling, adultery, are held by the 
general consent of these intensely interested parties, as detestable 
crimes. Who, then, are the parties in usurious contracts ? They 
are the State, the creditors and the families of the victims of usury. 
But tliese jjartics never give their consent, and consequently, the 
argument of consent between the parties in usury falls to the 
ground. Even if they did give their consent, that fact would 
be of no force, since no law can exonerate criminals from guilt, 
simply because they consented to commit crime. 

CONSIDEEATION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE BORROWERS — 
MEN WHO ARE FORCED TO PAY USURY. 

The great body of borrowers are already debtors ; men who 
are the victims of a general calamity, a financial crisis which is 
brought about by financial gambling, and at the Avill of the bro- 
kers, bankers, capitalists; — men who always liave the law of the 
country made to their order; or who, if the laws are not in con- 
formity with their purposes, through the power of money, bid 
defiance to all law, as tiiey have in tlieir very business stifled all 
conviction of the right of other men and retributive justice. 
Once the victim of such a crisis, honest poor men, who scorn to 
assign their property or make a fraudulent conveyance, borrow 
money to pay their honest debts. But in their refusal to borrow 
money, and in their determination to do right, they fall victims 
to men who despise right, and under the cover of law, commit 
every outrage upon the rights of property and human nature. 

But if the creditor be dishonest, tlien comes premature assign- 
ments, delays in the payment of debts, and general failures 
that are felt through the avenues of business and travle ; or 
fraudulent conveyances, or surreptitious business transactions 
that demoralize society at its foundation. 

If there were no other reasons for the enactment of the usury 
laws than the protection of men who become victims of this ne- 
cessity, that would of itself be sufficient to carry out the great 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 301 

first purpose of government in the protection of the weak from 
the aoo-ressions of the strong. Such borrowers are involuntary. 

The second class of borrowers — business men, upon whose 
success the employment and subsistence of the poorer classes are 
dependent. A system of heavy interest, or usury, cither drives 
them out of business and crushes out the laborers employed by 
tliom, — or if they continue in business, paying usury, they are 
overwhelmed in a hopeless bankruptcy sooner or later: the 
sooner the better. 

The third class of borrowers are speculators or sub-brokers, 
who take special contracts of hunting up men in distress, and 
do a more base, heartless, grinding business in a lower way than 
their principals. Still, Mr. Say and Eev. Dr. Wayland speak of 
" supply and demand as regulating the whole matter, and that 
injustice is done to no one." But wliat are the facts ? 

These borrowers increase the rate of interest and increase the 
demand for money, and with that increase, the oppression of the 
debtor by the creditor ; and just as in every other case, the hard- 
ship falls with crushing weight upon the helpless and unpro- 
tected. Indeed, the price paid by the usurer for money to com- 
mit usury with, places money for the time being out of the reach 
of the oppressed debtor, and makes it impossible to carry on his 
legitimate business, and destroys the vitality of commerce and 
business of every kind; — nor is there any greater fallacy than 
that the speculator has to pay the usury ? The speculator makes 
the poor man pay it in his advanced prices, on M^hat he sells, but 
more generally the whole have to suffer together; — the loaner, 
the speculator and the thousands who deal with them, are all in- 
volved in a general bankruptcy. The other side of usury is just 
about as fairly presented by giving 

THE CHAEACTER OF USURY AS DEVELOPED IN HIS HABITS 
OF CONDUCTINa HIS BUSINESS. 

All his business is done in the very teeth of the law, in viola- 
tion of the peace, policy and statute of the State. A good man 
may, in the moment of excitement, commit an act of indiscre- 
tion and violate a law, but he will always hasten to repair it. 



302 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

But tlie usurer violates the laws of the country in every single 
transaction of his trade, and his office sets precisely the same 
example of obedience to the public law as does the saloon of the 
professional gambler to whose vocation it is so nearly allied ; or 
as does the keeper of the grog-shop, who, like himself, prospers 
only as his customers sink to ruin. 

Every transaction of the broker's shop is a falsehood, and car- 
ries a deceit upon its face. His papers assert a lie in the amount 
borrowed ; they cover up a truth in the amount falsely wrung 
from his victim. When they sue in the Courts of Chancery, 
they institute their suits by perjury, and make the courts of jus- 
tice subservient to their crime. They don't pretend to collect 
their debts by the ordinary method. Every debt in default is a 
suit in court. Every misfortune Avhich may disable their victim 
from prompt payment, is followed by an execution. 

What is now the condition of the country ? What is it that 
fills every advertisement column of the newspapers ? The sheriff's 
sales-list: the executed property of victims of brokers' shops. 
What business chiefly engages the courts that are now busy be- 
yond all precedent? The answer is, to collect usurious debts. 

The usurer only loans to men in necessity : other men avoid 
him, as they dread the pestilential breath of bankruptcy; 
robbery and ruin. He loans to the unfortunate for the obvious 
reason, that other men could save themselves from his deadly 
grasp. 

Upon the other hand, the usurer could hope for nothing but 
in the necessity and ignorance of the unfortunate, which are his 
great staple in trade. Like a sea-vulture that scents the foeted 
breath of the dying sailor, and follows the vessel until his body 
has been cast into its watery tomb, only to be devoured by the 
hungry monster, so the usurer instinctively learns the unhealthy 
condition of the community, and follows his devoted victim until 
the last hope of recovery has passed away, only to consume his 
substance and devour his property. 

He is unmoved, though living by the violation of all law and 
trampling upon all justice. He has no sympathy with any one. 
He lives upon the necessities of men. He would save a drown- 
ing man if he could fix a paying price, or drive a good bargain 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 303 

with the man before he sunk. Such is the usurer and such are 
the men upon whom he preys. And it is but an act of justice to 
him to say that he is sometimes a worshipper in the temple of 
'God. 

But this is only the finisliing stroke of a deceit which scruples 
not to approach the Deity and invite him to become a pai'ticeps 
criminis in a hypocricy which invades the very holy of holies 
of heaven itself. He, too, is found giving alms in public, just 
as incendiaries hastening to accomplish the destruction of their 
victims by the knife, poison the food that there may be no escape. 
So this venal creature of corruption assails the altar of sacrifice, 
and with his filthy lucre, attempts to poison the watchmen upon 
the outer walls of the Temple of Truth, that he might thrust 
his hidden poignard to the heart of Christianity, and over its 
mangled remains grind the faces of the poor, until by common 
consent, robbery is made reputable in the Church of God. 

THE JEWISH LAW ON USURY. 

The Jewish law forbade all interest, usury or increase what- 
ever, either upon money, grain, any of the necessaries of life, or 
any other commodity. 

This great principle had its foundation in the true philosophy 
of all equal and just government, that every man shall pro- 
duce an amount equal at least to what he consumes. 

The settled maxim of Jewish law was this : " He that does 
not work, shall not eat." This maxim was just and right. It 
guaranteed to the people at large equality, and to every man 
justice. Every one lived upon his labor. No man lived upon 
his capital in his money, by taking usury of his brother. 

His only hope of success in business was based upon carefully 
husbanding and appropriating his means to such useful purposes 
in agriculture and the arts, &c., as gaVe him due compensation 
for his labor and ingenuity. 

The Jewish law was founded upon this great pillar of eternal 
justice : " Whatever ye would that men should do unto you, 
even do ye unto them." Such a law could not well tolerate such 
a system as usury, which makes labor entirely subservient to 



304 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

capital, and subsidizes industry for the benefit and support of 
idleness and crime. 

The language of the law is alike explicit, clear, and in exact 
harnaony with the true spirit of justice and benevolence which 
was breathed thi'ough the whole Jewish system. "If thou lend 
money to any of ray people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not 
be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury. 
If thou at all take thy neighbor's raiment to pledge, thou shalt 
deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down." — Exodus, 22d 
chajncr, 25th and 26th verses. 

" If thy brother be waxen poor and fallen into decay with 
thee, then thou shalt relieve him. Yea, though he be a stran- 
ger or a sojourner, that he may live with the&, take thou no usury 
of him or increase, but fear thy God, that thy brother may live 
with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, 
nor lend him thy victuals for increase." — Lev. 16th chap., 55-37 
verses. 

" Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother, upon usury 
of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything which is lent 
upon usury. Unto a stranger thou mayst lend upon usury, but 
unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury, that the Lord 
thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to, in 
the land whither thou goest to possess it." 

The Jewish people were for the most part engaged in agricul- 
tural pursuits ; and by the law every man had his allotted posi- 
tion. It was the purpose of the law to suifer no man to be idle, 
to foster no idleness, to engender no crime ; for idleness begets 
crime, and is inseparable from it. The equality of her people 
was the glory of her government, and the bulwark of her strength. 
This equality could only be maintained in the spirit of justice, 
by allotting to every man the fruits of his own labor, and allow- 
ing no man to live upon the labor of others, and appropriating 
the surplus, whatever it mig^it be, of the aggregate labor of the 
whole peojjle, to the support of the infirm and unfortunate. 
But where every man labors, there Avould be but few infirm; 
where there was no speculation, there were scarcely any unfortu- 
nate in business. The policy of the Jews was to allow to each 
other in dealing or loaning money no increase or usury, 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 305 

Avhich was with them convertible terms, for the reasons indica- 
ted in the foregoing. Indeed, there was a still higher rnle, the 
great principle upon which the whole Jewish law is founded. 
" To love thy neighbor as thyself." This law could never be 
carried out, either in the letter or in the spirit, where usury in 
any sense had the countenance of law, or the sanction of public 
sentiment. 

But the Jev\'s did loan on usury to neighboring nations, which, 
though no better in morals, was a very adroit stroke in political 
economy. By sending their money abroad to labor they could 
ruin the Canaanites and soon gain all of their property, which in 
a very short time, by very moderate rates of interest, would ex- 
haust the principal in usury and leave those nations bankrupt. 
Capital invited into the State to make us rich on such a 
disinterested errand, could not be expected to come unblessed 
with the kind wishes and benediction of that most benevolent 
and charitable class of public benefactors — the usurer. AVith 
the invitation of the law and the gospel, the legislator and the 
minister, with the approving smile of the Christian, and the 
constituent, the philanthropic broker from the far-off East, went 
to work to make money for the Western people after this Avise. 
He bought up depreciated and worthless railroad bonds, and 
other equally valuable stocks, upon which brokers, gamblers, or 
blacklegs play poker on stakes of counterfeit money. This they 
called a basis of banking. They bought beautiful fine paper, 
and drew pictures of superannuated politicians upon it, and 
called it money. This money v/as sent to accommodate the 
people. There were a million of dollars sent to assist in im- 
proving the country, at the moderate rate of twenty-five per 
centum per annum. These millions of dollars were loaned on 
very reasonable security. They only asked of the people two 
or three endorsers beside the borrower ; and only about five 
times the amount mortgaged, and then gave them at least 
three weeks beyond the maturity of their deed of trust, to raise 
the money ; and then if the money was not raised, they would 
only buy in the property for at least half the amount of the debt 
and wait for the balance until the debtor could earn it. Their 
million of Eastern capital which came to labor for four years 
20 



306 CEIMES OP THE CIVIL WAE. 

found already a million of circulating medium. But neither 
their million nor our million, begat another dollar at the end of 
the four years. The interest of their million at twenty-five per 
cent., was just another million, so their million having done its 
errand very gracefully, bowed to the people, taking the other 
million to pay the usury, leaving us without a currency of any 
kind. Then steps in another equally friendly class of public 
benefactors, to sell the mortgaged property of the country — all 
simply because usury lowered the rates of interest. Never was 
sagacity more highly honored than that of the Jews, who would 
suffer no increase to be taken of each other; for thereby they 
prevented general poverty and consequent crime. Nor was ever 
ruin to a neighboring nation more certainly effected than in the 
exactions of usury by the Jews, in their loaning of money to the 
Canaanites. And after the improvement in arts and science for 
many centuries, and the regulations of Jewish law in political 
economy, there can be offered no amendment which will command 
the approving judgment of future ages, or which will not be 
ultimately discarded by statesmen, as a ruinous innovation of 
reckless adventurers in the science of government. 

The wrongs endured by labor at the hands of capital, cannot 
be more graphically pictured than has been done by the hand of 
desolation at the present time. Behold thousands of field-hands 
who have spent the past summer in raising millions of bushels 
of grain with their own hands, on soil given to mankind in 
common by the Almighty, when winter comes, are refused 
enough of bread to sustain them, and can find no employment 
by which to secure money enough to purchase the necessaries of 
life, to save their families from famine, and are compelled to j^ay 
usury on money, and mortgage their homesteads to secure the 
payment, as the mild alternative ! Is not this a fearful com- 
mentary upon the justice of the world, that from the cradle to 
the grave, the poor, who produce the wealth of the country, are 
to a great extent, denied the luxuries, the comforts, and almost 
the essentials of living, while the rich revel in the excesses of 
the products of the labor of the poor ? It is in the contract of 
the organization of society, that justice shall be done to each, 
and protection shall be afforded to all. But without usury laws 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAIt. 307 

this cannot be done. The difference of tlie power of money 
over every other article of trade, is almost as great as that of 
capital over labor. Every other kind of property is taxed up 
to its full value, and is made to bear more than its share of the 
expenses in the wars and improvements of the country, while 
under no circumstances can it yield the profits of money, even 
at 6 per cent, per annum. 

THE EFFECTS OF USURY ON TRADE. 

The real cliaracter of usury, and its effects upon trade, are 
concisely and powerfully presented in the statute of Anne, 
enacted in 1714 : 

" Whereas the reducing of interest to ten, and from thence to 
eight, and thence to six in the hundred, has, by experience, been 
found very beneficial to trade, and improvement of lands ; and 
whereas the heavy burden of the late long and expensive war 
hath been chieiiy borne by the owners of the land of this king- 
dom, by reason whereof they have been necessitated to contract 
very large debts, and thereby, and by the abatement in the value 
of their lands, are l)ecome greatly impoverished ; and whereas, 
by reason of the great interest and profit of money made at 
home, the foreign trade has been neglected," &c. 

This statute has been vindicated by the judgment, wisdom, and 
experience of the British government, for nearly a century and 
a half, and the reasons are as good to-day as they were then, and 
are as true in America as they are in Europe. 

That no injustice may be done to any one, it may be suggested 
that no other capital than money, though productive and gener- 
ative, can make such vast profits as money loaned at 6 per cent, 
interest. Though money is really unproductive, and yields no- 
thing; yet it is like the spade or the plough, which does no- 
thing excepting only as it is directed by the hand of the laborer. 

This accompanying statement shows how impossible it is to 
pay usury, although it may be contracted, and the impossibility 
to pay it, is a conclusive reason why usury should not be tolera- 
ted as a matter of civil contract. 

An eminent statist of Boston has taken the pains to show 
what would be the effect of different rates of interest upon money 



308 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

in Massachusetts, for a term of 40 years, a period proportioned 
to the being of a State. He takes : 

Loans and discounts of Banks in Massachusetts, 

Dec. 4, 1851 $93,000,000 

Interest thereon, 40 years — interest taken in ad- 
vance every six months, and added to principal, 

at 6 per cent, per annum 1,063,455,000 

do. do. at 7 per cent per annum, 1,607,970,000 

Difference between 6 and 7 per cent. 40 years... $544,515,000 

Nearly the valuation of the whole State of Mas- 
sachusetts in 1850, which was $508,000,634 

Interest on $93,000,000, 40 years, at 8 per cent. 2,436,600,000 
do. do. do. atGpercent 1,063,455,000 

Diiference between 6 and 8 per cent. 40 years... $1,373,145,000 
Valuation of Massachusetts deducted 598,000,634 

Difference between G and 8 per cent. 40 years — 

more than value of Mass. in 1850 $775,144,366 

THE GREAT OUTRAGE PERPETRATED IN ALLOAVING BANKS TO 

TAKE USURY. 

It is true that we have a usury law for banks as -well as for 
individuals. They have the right to issue notes far beyond their 
present capacity to redeem. But if individuals are suffered by 
law to take twenty-five or thirty-six per cent, usury, why not 
arant to banks the same privilege? They, however, do take 
this privilege. In the loan of $1,000 for thirty days, the nomi- 
nal interest is ten per cent. But gentlemen like these are not to 
be outwitted, for after taking out the interest of the note, and 
thus paying ten per cent, on money never received, the borrower 
has to take money on New York at 1| discount, or more, as the 
case may be, and when he has paid the exchange and interest, he 
finds the amount is at least twenty-five per cent, per annum ; 
thus making three dollars for every dollar of capital nominally 
invested. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 309 

This precious privilege of loaning credit, or promises to pay, 
i? peculiar to chartered institutions. But they receive their power 
to make money from the law, and after hiding under its shelter 
and receiving its protection, these gentlemen of the banks will 
complain that it is a great wrong done them that they are not 
allowed by law to loan at any rate in their discretion, and it is 
very difficult to give any good reason why banks should not 
take usury just as other persons do. 

But the whole is evidence conclusive of the destructive policy 
of allowing either banks or individuals to obstruct the business 
of the country in that way. 

ON THE SCARCITY OF MONEY. 

Another of the fallacies which deludes the public mind, but 
which iias no support in either experience or common sense, is 
that the interest of money ought to be high or low as money is 
scarce or plenty. If it be true that money is scarce, its scarcity 
is only relative, and is in proportion to the debts which are to 
be paid by it. If the debts of a country are heavy and the cur- 
rency is inadequate to its ready payment, then is usury intoler- 
able ; for all usury only increases the debt which is already too 
large to be liquidated, by the existing amount of money. The 
result is, that usury in hard times inevitably bankrupts men 
who, in better times, might endure its pressure for a time, but 
now are crushed and destroyed by its force. The reason there 
is a scarcity of money is this: The brokers have money to loan 
when the farmers have nothing to sell, and the mechanic can 
find no market fur his labor, nor the merchant for his merchan- 
dise. They are in the greatest need of money, and the broker 
2;ives out that it is scarce, and he loans at ruinous rates until his 
stock is exliausted ; he then calls in the aid of his old friend, 
the banker, who can accommodate to the fullest extent of his 
demand ; or if he should need further help, he calls on his finan- 
cial a<ljunct, the counterfeiter, who is engaged in corrupting the 
currency and coin of the country, just as the broker is engaged 
in obstructing their free circulation among the people — each 
doing his utmost to enrich himself by robbing the country. 



310 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

After sending their paper trash to the farthest extremities of the 
land, thereby making flush times and plenty of money, to make 
the excitement general and the delusion complete, they engage 
in sham sales of railroad bonds, running them up to par and far 
above par, and quoting them in their bank detectors as the most 
valuable of all securities, until every one is anxious to exchange 
property for railroad stock. By this trick of the trade, the 
brokers rid themselves of all this trash ; get all the money of 
the country into their coffers; secure mortgages upon all of the 
real estate which may be embarrassed, and the individual notes 
of unsuspecting endorsers, all of which have been given for fancy 
stocks and moonshine investments. Then, in the spirit of pub- 
lic benefactors, they commence to warn the public and create a 
panic, send startling telegraphic dispatches to the daily j^apers, 
setting forth some European failures, and then conspire together to 
crush" two or three leading commercial houses in the several cen- 
tres of trade. This, of course, destroys public confidence, and 
then a general upheaving in the monetary world ensues, and a 
crash in all business soon follows. Then a bank-note detector, 
containing the latest news, is issued by the brokers, in which 
they expose counterfeit money, decimate bank paper, and outlaw 
railroad and city bonds, which have been sent out to the public 
by their own hands, and then, with a cool imj)udence, which 
would challenge the admiration of the devil, they commence the 
mad-dog cry of hard times and scarcity of money. 

The truth is, that money is just as plenty in hard times, as a 
general thing, as in others, with only this difference: that in easy 
times, money is in the hands of the people; in hard times, it is 
in the hands of the few who combine to make it scarce, that they 
may sjjeculate upon it. 

This is the brief history of the cause of the scarcity of money. 
Money will be used in business, whether interest is high or low ; 
that is what it was coined for, and it is the only use which can 
be made of it, except that if the rates of money are high, it can- 
not be used advantageously in business; if low, it can. Usury 
laws certainly do not lessen the amount of money; they only 
protect it in its i^roper and legitimate service; and certainly it 
must be manifest to every one, that when nothing makes money 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 311 

but money itself, and that by usury, that the rich who receive it 
are made richer, and the poor who pay it are made poorer, wlien 
if, by usury laws capital was restrained, it would flow into tlie 
legitimate channels of business, and labor would be employed 
and remunerated, and such a thing as an entire stagnation in 
business, by which ruin overtakes so many, would be entirely 
unknown in the country. 

In proof of tliis, we summon the fact that in times of peace 
a financial crisis has never occurred, which was not produced by 
speculation and usury. By a trick of stock-gamblers, they create 
a superabundance of paper money, railroad bonds and fancy 
stocks, that a pressure may ensue, in the meantime passing it into 
other hands at high rates, just as greenhorn gamblers on Mis- 
•issippi steamboats are permitted at cards to win the first games, 
to inspire self-confidence that the old blackleg may, at his leisure, 
sweep the stakes and seize the pile. 

THE MORALS OF USURY. 

The question of usury is not only one of political economy, 
affecting the vitality of commerce, the integrity of the civil gov- 
ernment and the transactions of all the current business of the 
country, but also one which, in every age of the world among 
civilized nations, has been a part of the religion of the churches 
and a pillar of morality. 

This crime is forbidden in the Decalogue, under the broad and 
comprehensive commandment : "Thou shalt not steal." 

To steal is to take the j^roperty without due compensation, 
contrary to the wish and against the consent of the lawful 
owner. 

Takini- usury is clearly and plainly inhibited by this com- 
mandment. The common clandestine thief takes advantage of 
the owner, and purloins his property without his consent. The 
highway robber assaults the traveller, takes advantage of his 
■weakness, and divests him of his property against his will and 
without his consent. The burglar enters the dwelling at night, 
and availing himself of the slumber of the inmates, carries off 
the property, contrary to the consent of the owner. The incen- 



312 CEIMES OP THE CIVIL WAK. 

diary goes at midnight and destroys by torchliglit, houses and 
property, without the consent of tlie owners. The broker, usurer 
and paper-shaver (convertible terms) find their victims in neces- 
sity, and take their usurious interest without their real consent. 
Side by side with their robbery, arson, burglary, swindling, 
USURY takes its place as a violation of the great law of God, 
"Thou shalt not steal." In perfect conformity or harmony with 
the characteristics of usury, is the denunciation it receives in the 
fifteenth psalm. He is excluded from the tabernacle of worship 
in the wilderness, from the temple at Jerusalem and from the 
kingdom of God. The classification given to the usurer by the 
great political economist, is well worthy of the attention of be- 
lievers in Divine Revelation, and it will commend itself to the 
good sense of the people everywhere. 
The usurer is excluded : — 

1st. From the society of those who "walk uprightly" — those 
who are fair and honest in their dealings with their fellow men. 
2d. From those "who work in righteousness." 
3d. From men who " speak the truth in their heart." 
He is then associated in character with those : — 
1st. Who " backbite with their tongue." 
2d. Who " do evil to their neighbor." 
3d. AVho " take up a reproach against their neighbor." 
4th. With those in whose eyes a vile person is countenanced. 
5th. With those who dishonor thera that fear the Lord. 
6th. With those who take a reward against the innocent, either 
by swearing falsely to condemn them, or by espousing the cause 
of the guilty. 

This general denunciation, in which the usurer is made con- 
spicuously enormous at first sight, appears ungenerous only be- 
cause his crime has been made comparatively reputable through 
the ver}' power which his money has given to him. He has 
sought to subsidize the press and secure its advocacy of the doc- 
trine of FREE TRADE IN MONEY ; he has aluiost silenced the 
voice of the pulpit against his great wrong, and he has succeed- 
ed in introducing text-books in the colleges of the country, 
making this precious system a part of the standard science of: 
political economy. Then, of course, the subject of usury is kept. 



CEIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 313 

from the view of three great classes of the community — tlie 
readers of newspapers, the attendants on churches and students 
at colleges. But the truth of God will not be silenced. Heaven's 
law is unchangeably eternal, and it is eminently proper that the 
opinions of the psalmist and the just judgment of God concern- 
ing usury and the usurer, shall be vindicated. 

The usurer cannot be an upright man or one that worketh 
righteousness. There is one great law for all upright men. It 
is this : " Whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do 
ye even so to them." It scarcely needs analysis to prove the 
utter impossibility of the usurer conforming to this law: 

1st. He violates the law of God plainly and unequivocally. 

2d. He violates the law of the land which puts a limit to the in- 
crease of interest on money. 

3d. He violates the very essence of the law which says : 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 

The usurer is A^ery justly classed with men who speak falsely 
in their heart. His papers are drawn to avoid the letter of the 
law ; his business is for the most part done privately, to avoid 
arrest when his crime of usury may be plead in court ; he is a 
man who makes the very paper presented to the court show forth 
a lie. The uprightness and morality of usury may well be 
judged of, when it is remembered that nearly every transaction 
in a broker's shop is amenable to the criminal laws of the land. 
Nor is it an injustice to give him his place side by side with him 
that backbiteth with his tongue ; for no slander doth so destroy 
the reputation of a business-man as that he is indebted to the 
brokers. Nor do any class of men so relentlessly seek the de- 
struction of their victim as do the brokers. The courts are 
filled with the foreclosures of mortgages by which property is 
to be sacrificed in the hands of the debtors. The newspapers 
are filled with the publication to the world of the unnecessary 
ruin and forced bankruptcy of the unfortunate body of men 
who fall a prey to brokers. " He doeth evil to his neigh- 
bor." The wages of labor, the whole value of property, the 
happiness of the community, and the peace of families, are de- 
stroyed by usury. Every sheriff's sale is a stroke at the value 
of property, and aifects the third and disinterested party only 



314 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

second to the immediate sufferers^ and makes properly value- 
less. 

Nor is the comparison an injustice to tlie usurer wlien he is 
placed upon a level with the man who takes a reward against 
the innocent; who hires himself to prosecute an innocent man, 
or he who forswears himself for money. The wretch who would 
extort a promise of reward from a drowning man, is the fit com- 
panion of him who would extort money from a man in any 
other kind of distress whatever. So after this manner the 
word of God deals with the usurer. 

HOW THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY ARE INJURED BY USURY. "~ 

We will only cite the sheriflp's sale as an illustration of this 
point. A. owns property, but Avishes to sell it. It is worth 
$5,000 in cash. B. wishes to buy just such property and thinks 
the price a fair one, but C. has mortgaged his farm to D., and 
cannot borrow the money to redeem it at a less rate than twenty- 
five per cent., which rate of interest he has been paying for the 
last two years ; but even at that rate he cannot give the addi- 
tional security. His property is already mortgaged for one-fourth 
of its value, and it is now due. The result is, his farm goes to 
sale and only brings $2,000, though it is well worth $8,000, and 
is so regarded, and the mortgagee (the usurer) buys the property 
at that price. But B., who would buy the property of A., sees that 
property sells at one-fourth of its accredited value at sheriff's 
sale, and declines purchasing it ; for the frequency of sheriffs' 
sales utterly depreciates the value of all property ; so he awaits 
and prefers to buy at sheriffs' sale, or, what is its equivalent, he 
will seek out some good farm whose owner is in distress, loans 
his money to him; mortgages his property; has a sheriffs' sale 
of his own, and gets his property at a corresponding sacrifice. 

When sheriffs' sales are common, property has no value : money 
alone is valuable and has power. 

THE EVIL EFFECTS OF USURY UPON SOCIETY — INDUCING 

CRIME. 

The most lamentable feature in the character of usury is its 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 315 

results. Thousands of those Avho become the victims of tliis 
crime, shrink from the public gaze, and flee from society and 
seek refuge in obscure and solitary poverty, to hide their weak- 
ness and disgrace ; whilst others grow desperate, and feeling that 
society has tolerated their robbery, grow reckless and engage in 
open theft and robbery to indemnify themselves for the forays 
made upon them under cover of law. 

There are still others who are broken-hearted and fly to the 
bowl and sink under the consuming fires of dissipation and in- 
temperance. But there are the great masses who are thrown out 
of employment, who are driven to either crime or starvation as 
a fearful alternative. 

Usury is the greatest of financial crime. The great estimate 
placed upon wealth and the social and political power which it 
commands, makes it the desire of all to make money, even at 
the expense of virtue. To be rich is to be everything worthy 
of human aspiration. It is for this cause that men peril every- 
thing to become wealthy. The great majority of the young men 
of this country are jioor ; they have, in order to commence busi- 
ness, to borrow money. In times like the present, they have to 
pay usury ; to succeed in business they must make more than 
can be ordinarily made in the legitimate business. They early 
learn habits of dishonesty, to atone for their poverty, and the 
crime of usury practiced on them. If they see failure staring 
them in the face, the oflice of the lottery is their first resort, and, 
like the fooliwh philosopher who sought the source of the rain- 
bow to gather colors, they buy lottery tickets until their present 
money and visionary hopes have forever passed away together. 

To be dishonored in the usurer's office, to endure protest, is 
more than their youthful hope can brook. In hopes of redeem- 
ing his paper in due time, upon the part of the drawer, and a 
determination tiiat he shall redeem it at the time appointed upon 
the part of the drawer, the note is drawn Avith a forged endorse- 
ment. T'hen soon comes open forgery. In other cases, passing 
counterfeit money and bold, 0{)en robbery — and theft and mur- 
der are resorted to, to repair a fortune squandered upon usurers. 
Unfortunately for the country in every crisis, we have such ex- 
hibitions of crime as make any other illustrations superfluous. 



316 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

And to fasten the guilt Avhere it lies directly, these times are 
made by the broker to order. 

For want of employment, thousands of men commit crime, 
who loathe it until necessity has forced them to resort to it as 
the means of a livelihood. And whatever supports even idle- 
ness, contributes to crime in all of its various forms and charac- 
ters. Men who live and have not property, must labor, beg, 
steal, or starve. When there is no employment to be had, men 
cannot labor. They will not and ought not to starve ; then the 
country has the revolting alternative of pauperism or theft, as 
the means of support for the masses of the people who live by 
daily labor. 

Upon the other hand, the evil is not less to even the usurer 
and his family. In his case, is an example of a man living in 
idleness by the commission of crime as an avocation in life, giv- 
ing respectability to offensive wrong-doing. 

THE EXTENT OF THE EVIL IS SUCH AS TO DEMAND MOST STRIN- 
GENT LAWS AGAINST USURY. 

In an impartially written article a great injustice would be done, 
to a most momentous question, to suffer any merely political con- 
sideration to have any bearing upon it whatever. Every con- 
sideration of that character has been carefully excluded. But 
the truth must not be sacrificed to gratify even a political party, 
no difference under what name it may be recognized, especially 
when all the political parties of the country are alike implicated 
in the great wrong of paper-shaving. Paper-shaving is an evil 
in which the State governments have not only been a participant, 
but direct sufferers, and the whole people have been victims. 
Railroad companies have been formed, of which counties become 
heavy stockholders. Bonds were issued, drawing high per cent, 
interest per annum, for every dollar of which the counties, and 
all of their improvements, are bound by mortgage.* These 
mortgaged bonds have been sold in market down as low as fifty 
per cent. 

Here, then, is the most ruinous usury given by the country or 
their guardians, to stock -brokers, besides a constantly accruing 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 317 

interest on money, which the people have never received. But 
the States have set no better example to their citizens. For any 
delinquent taxes necessary to pay this extraordinary squander- 
ing, the law demands twenty-five per cent, interest until paid, 
when the interest is at least fifty per cent, upon the amount 
realized in the sale of the bonds. 

AVill a free people long tolerate this outrage upon their rights ? 
Can any State prosper under such rule, or rather misrule ? 

The evil has assumed the form of peculation, or public rob- 
bery, upon the part of public officers. The money of the various 
treasuries of the States, has been used as the basis of nearly half 
of the country, in which some of the treasurers have been par- 
ticipants in the swindle and usury. Nor did the country fare 
any better when the public lands Avere brought into market. 
Brokers and the lackeys of brokers, sat in the land-office levy- 
ing black-mail upon distant purchasers who were hunting homes ; 
and loaning money at forty per cent, interest per annum. 

Merchants have had to pay a corresponding tax for the use of 
money, when tlie very prevalence of usury made it impossible 
for them to collect their debts. Every part of society, every 
branch of business, and all the citizens of the States, have felt 
the evil. 

No man, except the usurer, has escaped the general ruin. 

The clear and unquestionable right to legislate against usury, 
arises from the very nature of the government of society. The 
true object of all just government, is to protect men in the en- 
joyment of their rights ; to protect or preserve the weak from 
the aggression of the strong ; to prevent the learned from impos- 
ing on the unlearned ; to rescue the innocent from the conspir- 
acies of the malicious ; to place the unsuspecting honest man as 
far as may be, beyond the grasp of the vicious. 

For the purpose of justice, it is of no consequence whatever, 
how the rights of men are invaded, nor by whom society is in- 
corporated, for the purpose of protecting each of its members 
from injury and aggression. 

Unless society proposes to do this much, it were better to 
abandon it for that personal protection and self-defence which all 
men are entitled to. 



318 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR, 

One of the essential rights of man is the right to property, 
and taking or appropriating any man's property to the use of 
another, and contrary to his will, is such an outrage and crime 
as make it the duty of society to recognize and punish. If this 
be not done, individual rights would be better protected without 
laws and without society. The strong need no protection, but 
the weak and defenceless do, and hence the necessity for society 
and its proper basis. One of the strongest and most frequently 
urged objection to USURY laws is, that " they cannot be enforced." 
Is this the case? Can it be true? Suppose they cannot be en- 
forced. AVhat is the reason ? Is it possible that the legal power 
of money is such that it defies the laws even in the hands of 
men who are bound by oath to execute them ? It is not well 
worth the trouble of every political economist, to look into this 
matter. It is well worthy the attention of the moralist also. 
The corrupting power of money is such that it undermines the 
positive commandments of God ; overrides the laws and regu- 
lators of the Church, and draws into the current of its destruc- 
tive power, the whole Christian system of morals. 

That a law Is not executed is no argument for its repeal, but 
is an overwhelming reason In favor of increased effort to secure 
its execution. Let us see what it amounts to. Among the In- 
dians, where theft is accounted a national virtue, to make laws 
against theft would be thought a great folly. On the frontier, it 
is deemed imprudent to legislate against carrying concealed 
weapons, because they are found In the pockets of every man. 

To allow the various classes of criminals of the country to pre- 
scribe the legislation against crime, would soon rid your statute- 
book of the whole criminal code. But, say the friends of usury, 
the present law cannot be enforced. Why not? Have we no 
justice of the peace? no constables? no sheriffs? no courts? no 
jails? no grand jurors? no honest men to testify? no prosecuting 
attorney to do his duty? no honest jurors to fix his penalty? no 
ofhcers to enforce it ? Let it not go out to the world that we are in 
a state of anarchy ! Ah, but replies the objector very wisely, you 
cannot get them all convicted. Ah, ha! when and in what 
country were all horse-thieves arrested and convicted, all mur- 
derers brought to justice and all incendiaries discovered ? Nono 
under heaven. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 319 

Mii=t civilized communities, therefore, repeal all laws and abol- 
ish all penalties against theft, murder and arson? This would 
be the conclusion according to that analogy of argument; and 
the conclusion is just as forcible in the one case as in the other. 
How shall the law be enforced ? By the influence of magis- 
trates, who, instead of ridiculing the law and speaking contempt- 
uously of the moral regulations of the government, ought to 
remember the solemn obligations of their oath, and not forget 
that tlie faithful magistrate bears not the sword of God in vain. 
Let all peace officers instead of notifying the public that usury 
laws cannot be enforced, trace the violations to their origin, and 
deal with the criminal accordino; to law. Let the Prosecutina: 
Attorney fearlessly do his duty. Let Grand Jury-men report 
and investigate all delinquencies coming within their notice or 
arresting their attention. Let every law-abiding citizen remem- 
ber that it is a strict observance and faithful execution of the laws 
of our land that gives security to our lives, liberty and proper- 
ty ; and if this law be enforced, the blessings of Pleaven and the 
prosperity of the country will accompany its execution ; no dif- 
ference what the law may be within the clearly recognized limits 
of the Constitution of the State. 

Make the law against usury penal, with fine and imprison- 
ment, as in New York and Tennessee. Make it a disqualifica- 
tion for office, as in Florida. Make it the duty of the Grand 
Jury to present, and the Prosecuting Attorney to prosecute the 
usurer as he does other felons wiio are not as well dressed as 
himself, and you will soon hear no more of the cry from the 
timid and the boast of the usurer, that' usury laws cannot be 
executed. 

The enormity of the character of the usurer, the intense hol- 
lowness and perfidy of his real nature, is nowhere exhibited in 
such hideous aspects, as it is in his appeal to the deeply injured 
and outraged debtor's honor to pay his usurious debts. 

After having taken advantage of the poor fellow's necessity, 
binding up his j)roperty by mortgage, then harassing him by 
duns, then obstructing him in his business transactions, and dis- 
honoring him among business men — then, after all his efforts, 
fail to destroy him, with most extraordinary civility, he appeals 



320 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

to him and tells him, " You are in honor bound to pay your 
usurious debts." And even professed Christians will use this 
argument to enforce usury. It is the old argument of honor 
among thieves, with just this difference, that the old argument 
applied to the case where both parties were alike dishonest. Is 
it possible that any well-informed or honest man will contend 
that there is any obligation resting on any citizen to violate the 
laws of his country ? If the laws may be violated with impu- 
nity, there is no longer any security for life, liberty or property. 
But if tho usury laws may be violated without punishment, 
why may not any and every other law? Who is to be the judge 
of the particular laws which may be violated with impunity, 
and which men are in hpuor bpuad to violate ? 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 321 



CHAPTER II. 

Curse of the Funding System. 

Public stocks in all countries have been justly accounted a great 
incubus upon trade. They are always the property and support 
of idle people, who live on the interest as annuities. This of- 
fers to both idle men and idle capital a premium for their idle- 
ness, and destroys the ordinary business of a country, by with- 
drawing the active capital necessary to legitimate, general and 
successful prosecution of tr&de and industry. 

These, idlers live upon the labor of the peoj)le, dragged from 
them by the tax gang. Just as standing armies are recruited 
from the families of the poor, so are taxes gathered from the labor 
of the poor, to keep up the market value of public stocks. 

The funding system embodies ail of the odious features blend- 
ed, of monarchy, aristocracy, and military despotism. It is a 
species of government which is made up of, and administered by 
bondholders, bankers, idlers, speculators, stockbrokers, consumers 
of other men's labor, tax-gatherers, exciseman, spies, and mili- 
tary satraps for the subjugation of producers and tax-payers. 
No diiference what may be the nominal form, such a government 
is essentially a despotism. 

The funding systems are always based upon public debts, for 
the purpose of transferring the control of the government into 
the hands of bondholders as security for their obligations. 

AVhilst the funding systems last, the government is adminis- 
tered in the interest of the bondholders, who control its legisla- 
tion. Every independent government is jealous of the rival 
power of those monied oligarchies, which dethrone monarchies 
and destroy governments by the transfer of the debt from the 
people of the country from whom it is due to strangers, who 
thereby secure a powerful and dangerous influence in the govern- 
ment, and work its destruction. 
21 



322 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR, 

Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the system of voluntary gov- 
ernment, was the deadly enemy of the funding system ; because 
the American debt, if concentrated in any government of Europe, 
through its agents and emissaries, would exercise undue influ- 
ence in our own, but if scattered through many governments, 
would secure againstthe new government dangerous combinations. 
In the present funding systems all of these evils are combined. 

THE EXTENT AND AMOUNT OF THE DEBT OF THE UNITED 

STATES. 

December 3d, 1866, the Secretary of the Treasury reports our 
debt at $2,551,422,121.20. 

Including treasury notes, it was $2,681,751,081.82. 

These are the figures given by the Secretary of the Treasury. 

In June 20, 1866, the audited debt was $2,783,425,879.21. 

The uncertainty, the want of candor and pervading corruption 
of the Treasury Department, make it impossible to ascertain the 
exact amount, but the outstanding claims, accounts, certificates, 
bounties unpaid and every other form of debt with capitalized 
pensions, will swell the amount to the estimate of Thaddeus Ste- 
vens, at $4,000,000,000 at least, and the reports of the Secretary 
of the Treasury to the contrary, notwithstanding, the debt is 
constantly increasing, and will increase in all time to come, under 
the present management. 

THE FEAUDS OF THE BONDS. 

FiBST, They cost but about forty cents on the dollar. ' To pay 
them, the value of the face will be two hundred and fifty per 
cent., or in plainer English, we pay the debt twice and one-half. 

Second, We are paying interest on these bonds at the rate of 
7.30 per cent, in greenbacks, on the face of the notes, which, 
considering their real value at forty cents on the dollar, is 18.25 
per cent. ; but when these seven-thirty bonds are changed into 
six per cent, gold-bearing bonds, then we are paying in gold fif- 
teen per cent., besides paying the debt twice and a half. 

But if these bonds are made the basis of banking, the banks 
clear fifteen per cent, per annum. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 323 

Then the banker has upon the original amount invested, as 
follows, namely : — 

Interest on bonds, 15 per cent, gold, in greenbacks 

at 149 21 percent. 

Amount invested in banking, 15 per cent, on the face 

and upon the whole 45 per cent. 

Total interest per annum QQ percent. 

In August 2, 1864, one dollar in gold would buy ^2.89 in 
greenbacks. 

Every soldier under the old law was entitled to ^100 bounty 
in gold. 

The soldier was paid in greenbacks, and went to the brokers to 
buy gold, and got for his hundred dollars in greenbacks, thirty- 
four dollars in gold. 

On the same day, the broker who had the one hundred dollars 
which the soldier ought to have had, took his hundred dollars 
into the market and sold it for two hundred and eighty-nine 
dollars, drawing 6 per cent, interest in gold. 

The interest for one year would be 17.34 cents in gold, or 
17.34 per cent, on the original one hundred dollars. This 17.34 
turned into greenbacks at 1.60 for gold, the selling price next 

year would make in greenbacks 27.74 per cent. 

Then the National Bank stock was worth 15 

per cent, interest. 

Interest on the original investment ,....43.35 per cent. 

Total interest $7 1.1 9 greenbacks. 

Making more than twice in greenbacks, for one year's interest 
given to the banker, what w^as given to the soldier in gold for his 
whole bounty. 

In fact, the banker's dollar draws 71.19 per cent, interest. 

And the banker's dollar to him was worth just 8.I34 as much 
as the soldier's dollar was to him. 

The interest on the debt, duly compounded, will pay the debt 
every eleven and two-thirds years. 

It will, without further compounding, pay it off twice in every 



324 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

twenty-three and one-third years. It will pay it three times 
every thirty-five years. 

It will pay it four times every forty-six and two-third years, 
and still this hateful monopoly remains with all of the army of 
revenue officers, and army of military officers devouring the 
whole country, putting the yoke as a fixture on the necks of the 
people, and placing the bondholders beyond the reach of want, 
and irresponsible to any form of taxation. 

-THE CURSE AND POWERS OF CORRUPTION OF THE FUNDING 

SYSTEM. 

The funding system is a political machinery of greater power, 
more complicated and intricate in its ramifications, than exists, 
or can long exist in any elective system of government, which 
exerts an influence utterly incompatible with any manner of con- 
stitutional freedom — freedom of elections, freedom of speech, 
freedom of the press or purity of the judiciary. 

The extent of this power is incalculable. The magnitude of 
its force is irresistible. 

Five hundred millions of dollars annually collected and ex- 
pended — collected from the laborers already oppressed, to be 
lavished upon capitalists already corrupted and overbearing — 
has the double power to destroy free government and degrade 
the people, for which purpose it is employed. The amount thus 
collected from the people places every manner of business at the 
mercy of capital, which may create or destroy at will, and keep 
it in perpetual terror and control its political action. 

The amount thus disbursed is a corruption fund employed in 
the subornation of the people. The whole money of the fund- 
ing system is at the service of the monopolists, to buy up the 
bread, meat and clothing, and extort double prices from the poor 
at the peril of their living. In addition to the power of the 
money employed, is the power exercised by the army of asses- 
sors, collectors, inspectors, detectives, spies, pimps and common 
informers, who consume a revenue sufficient to carry on the gov- 
ernment. These officers employ their functions in direct influ- 
ence upon all the elections, and under the present revenue sys- 



CEI]yfES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 325 

tem, suspend distilleries for violations of the law if the propri- 
etors and emploi/ees withhold their support at elections from the 
party in power ; or compound with them, if they consent to 
exert an active influence in favor of the local adherents of the 
ruling political organization, with other manufacturing establish- 
ments. Other corresponding means are employed for the same 
purpose. 

These officers are regularly distributed throughout the coun- 
try, and with their subordinates, who are active tricksters, 
schooled in the low artifices which disgrace America, and carry 
elections, there is nowhere else such a complete political police. 
But these men are, without our consent, employed in our name 
— paid with our money. The influence of this vast, varied and 
corrupting patronage extends farther, and is even more baleful ; 
it reaches into the community at large, silences the ojipositiou ot 
all aspirants to place and favor, and secures their active co-opera- 
tion in the perpetuity of the nefarious system, hoping to re- 
ceive place as their reward. 

But the other army of bank officers, presidents, cashiers, tell- 
ers, clerks, runners, directors, &c., &c., with the oligarchy of 
bondholders, are an active, organized force engaged in the plan- 
ning, scheming and. execution of every conceivable deception and 
crime necessary to success. 

The enormous sum, of which the people are annually robbed, 
defies all powers and departments of Government. Legislation 
is under its influence. Poor, miserable mendicants are elected 
to Congress to represent their people. This is applied in their 
purchase. They come home independent, live in magnificence, 
and forget their constituencies. Just in this manner has money 
bought up the unfaithful, from Epialtcs at Thermopylae who 
betrayed Leonidas, down to Benedict Arnold who betrayed 
Washington. 

The judiciary is in like manner the tool of capital. The poor 
are afraid, because in danger of these tyrants, bought and bribed 
in advance. Their suits against banks, bondholders or green- 
backs, are decided before the pleadings are made out. Consti- 
tutions, laws, or long established judicial decisions, areas dust in 
the balances when weighed with the moneys at the command of 



o2() CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

the funcHiig system. And when incorruptible integrity resists 
these encroachments, ready-made impeachments remove the 
judges from their places. 

Even the Executive of a great people cringes before this om- 
nific power, and after surrendering the dignity of his office, and 
shrinking from the prompt execution of the Constitution and 
maintenance of the country, buys the poor privilege of filling an 
office robbed of its glory, sitting in a chair divested of its au- 
thority, representing a department absorbed by usurpation — by 
bartering and doling out these multitudes of offices as a quid jivo 
quo for the continuance of his scandalized place without impeach- 
ment. This subornation is carried into conventions of all par- 
ties everywhere. You will see bankers, brokers, usurers, extor- 
tioners, shavers, street corner loaners, either by themselves or 
through their supple tools, at every public gathering, presiding, 
making motions, offering resolutions, drumming up votes, cho- 
king off opposition, and strangling fair debate. 

The money of the funding system is employed in bribing and 
corrupting the metropolitan pulpit, and dribbling out meagre 
fees to the rural clergy, who engage in organizing their churches 
into auxiliary political parties in support of the capital that em- 
ploys them. 

The Freedmen's Bureau costs the United States nearly a quar- 
ter of a hundred million of dollars in actual cash, besides the 
loss of time, vagrancy, crime, degradation and anarchy, which 
are unsettling the foundations of Southern society, and destroy- 
ing the sources and avenues of the general wealth of the coun- 
try. Yet this Bureau is the legitimate child of the funding sys- 
tem, and spends the annual appropriations in schisms, in churches, 
in the employment and bribery for political jDuriioses, of all the 
convertible elements of the Southern States, using the brute 
force of armies to murder and subjugate those who can be neither 
suborned by actual bribes or bought by position. The history 
of lost causes, subjugated peoples and conquered territory, is the 
story of bribery. Golden gags, silver silences, and great places 
bestowed upon sudden conversions, — such is our history. The 
list of names, blacker than the ink which refuses to record them, 
would make a biographical dictionary which would shame the 
annals of the infernal regions. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 327 

Y'et such is the power of capital and the aggregation of wealth, 
against which, like half-grown growling children, we whine and 
find fault ; and then, like misanthropic sages, we reason and j)hil- 
osophize to a people who laugh at our complaints and never read 
philosophy, but rally to strengthen the force which, with accu- 
mulating power and accelerating sweep, levels us to the earth. 



328 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



CHAPTER III. 

Debt is Slavery, 

The debt of the United States is slavery, which becomes more 
exacting as the debt increases in volume. 

This debt has all the attributes of national and personal sla- 
very, and fixes itself alike on the realty and personalty of the 
country. 

IT MORTGAGES OUR REAL ESTATE. 

Salmon P. Chase did not hesitate to publish to the world 
through his factotum, Cooke, that the debt was a " first mort- 
gage" upon all of the property of the United States. 

This affects the title of the lands and leaves every man but a 
tenant upon his own property, w^ho may be ousted by the mort- 
gagee upon the first failure to meet the appointed instalment 
assessed in taxes. The mortgagee is pursuing the same oppres- 
sive and delusive course that is always pursued by every other 
mortgagee, with the intent to absorb the mortgager. 

Seeing that the land wdll always remain to be seized for the 
debt after every thing else fails, the mortgager first absorbs the 
personal property of his victim, then executes his land and holds 
both the realty and personalty in forfeiture of payment. 

Our creditor commences on food, raiment and medicines, which 
we must have if we li^je at all by tariifs, and takes at least one 
half before we are allowed to reduce them to possession. This 
strikes every body. 

Then he continues, by exacting stamps of every soul that can 
make a contract, pay a debt, or take a receipt ; this includes all 
of the very poorest laborers. 

Then he exacts an income tax upon every man who can make 
a thousand dollars per annum ; this is to strike the young and 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL "WAR. 329 

thrifty classes, just entering upon active life, oftentimes Avith 
parents and invalid relatives to support. From him five per cent, 
is exacted. Slight taxes are imposed upon gross amusements, all 
to feed the greater vices of life. 

Just here the tax list ends, as it reaches the mortgager, the 
bondholder who owns the mortgage remainder of the real estate, 
and receives the tax lists, stamp duties, excise and tariffs, to pay- 
up the interests accruing upon the mortgage notes. 

This gentleman is our master, who has so long reveled in 
wealth that he does not know his own slaves when he meets them 
abroad, and has not for them that affection which association, 
responsibility and interest give to the ordinary master. These 
are our untitled nobility. They are destitute of employment, 
indeed, they need no employment, every man who wields a plow, 
spade, anvil, loom or machinery of any kind, is his servant. 
Every woman who superintends kitchen, garden, or boarding- 
house, hands over to the bondholder all her surplus earnings 
after making daily tributes upon the necessaries of life, enjoying 
no luxuries for herself. The bondholder sits like a blind beggar 
by the way-side, shuts his eyes, extends his hands and cries of 
each one passing, in his piteous tones, " can't you give a poor 
man a penny." Lamartine, Kossuth, O'Connell and all the re- 
nowned beggars, public and private, of modern times, in present- 
ing the wants, claims and necessities of themselves, or the men- 
dicant whom they represent, are not to be compared with these 
indigent, honest, disinterested, patriotic, nay, more, — philan- 
thropic bondholders. 

The tariff upon food, raiment, medicines, and all that we ne- 
cessarily use, is a system of allowance as exact but more stinted, 
than has ever been imposed upon any laboring slaves, and when 
labor itself gives out, the laborer no longer of service to his mas- 
ter, is carted to the alms house, where his allowance and helpless- 
ness are complete. 

Like e\'ery other system of slavery, the law-making power is 
in the hands of the master. The laboring- masses are allowed to 
vote, but if he is a tenant, the landlord controls his vote or ousts 
him. If he is a laborer, the employer follows him to the polls, 
examines his ticket, puts a spy upon his track, and dismisses him 
for an attempt to vote against his will. 



330 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

If he is an operative, the manufacturer notifies him that all 
the hands are expected to vote the ticket of the proprietor, upon 
penalty of loss of employment. 

If he is a house or body servant, he is disposed of in a more 
summary manner. 

The bank holds the same rod in a quiet way over its debtors, 
endorsers and dependencies, who are expected to sustain the power 
that sustains them. The control is as complete over the polls as 
ever was held by Spartan over helot, by Jew over bondman, by 
Russian over serf, by master over slave. 

The footprints of the master precedes the slave into legisla- 
tive halls, where he assumes the arrogant airs and commands in 
the same authoritative tones. Here the people's servants are 
bought with their own money, to betray their sacred trust, 
and add a new thread to the screw to press them down, or remove 
a link to shorten the chain which will bind them more closely to 
the car-Avheel of oppression. 

In the court, the Judge is overawed with social proscription or 
sweetened with presents which could not be taken by an honest 
judiciary, or be given in evidence as bribes. 

Like courts, like juries, misdirected by judges and overawed 
or corrupted by capital, or failing in this, attorneys are bought 
up, witnesses are intimidated or corrupted, until the slave suitor 
gladly abandons his claim and leaves the court in disgust. The 
failure of one discourages the rest, and capital as thoroughly 
subdues the contestant, as the master would subjugate his slave by 
the bludgeon or cat 'o nine tails. 

Such is the multiform slavery of Americans by this debt, that 
every element of servitude has been transferred from the worst 
European governments to our American system. 

The Austrian and Prussian, flying from Provost Marshals, 
military government, arbitrary power and oppressive taxation, 
to preserve the credit of the reigning tyrant, comes to America 
to be greeted by all the odious appendages from which he has fled 
in Europe. 

The Irishman flies to escape a government made up of spies, 
adventurers and domestic enemies, to see the same style of gov- 
ernment revived in the United States. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 331 

Military establishments to suppress free enquiry, are the accom- 
paniment of this style of government, which are always neces- 
sary to collect taxes and transfer the lands when the mortgages 
are foreclosed to secure the payment of taxes. 

Is this not slavery, or is it robbery, which takes your labor be- 
fore it has been reduced to money, by levying taxes wdiich must 
be deducted from your crops, in tariffs which must be paid in 
the purchase of your food and raiment ? What is taxation without 
an equivalent, but rents? What are tariffs but subsidies, and 
what is slavery but the exactions of tariffs and taxes, which con- 
sume your labor and the time employed ? AVhat is transmitted 
debt but transmitted slavery, in its most deceitful form, against 
which philosophers have denounced as cruel and unjust; for the 
relief of which genius has no invention and industry no power ? 

To free the country of these tariffs and relieve it of this taxa- 
tion, and emancipate ourselves from the crushing weight of this 
exhausting and exhaustless slavery, is the primary and over- 
shadowing necessity of our political and social existence. 



332 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Bondholders and Bondmen. 



The funding system has introduced a privileged, governing 
class into the country, who are exempt like the French aristoc- 
racy, from taxation. They are known by the euphonious title 
of bondholders, with their corresponding psasants, the bond- 
men. 

THE BONDHOLDER WITH HIS DEPENDANTS, THE BONDMEN. 

The bondholder is a gentleman without business. He needs 
no business. His fortune is secure beyond perad venture. He 
has no risk of flood or fire, of rise or fall in the market. He 
has a first mortgage upon all of the property of the United 
States, and you are the mortgagees. Fire consumes cities and 
lays waste plantations; whole communities are impoverished. 
The bondholder sits indifferently smoking his pipe, and with 
dignified nonchalance, remarks, " true, the great city is burned 
down, but I hold a security upon the grounds upon Avhich it 
was built, which secures me ! " Floods sweep away mills, and 
devastate plantations, and send out the ruined planters as beggars 
in the land, but the bondholder is secure ; he has a mortgage on the 
water power when tlie mills are gone, upon the lands when the fen- 
ces have floated to the Gulf. When the merchantman plows the 
ocean to bring wealth from other lands, leaves his money to pay 
for his outward-bound cargo, to be taxed like other moneys, and 
sinks his home-bound cargo in the perils of the sea, the bondholder 
consoles himself that he has lost nothing, that his interest recedes 
nothing in amount, and his bonds depreciate nothing in value. 
Even the speculator, the cold-blooded, heartless speculator, mis- 
taking his chances in the monopolization of the food and raiment 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 333 

of the poor, loses Lis fortune in the sudden changes of the market, 
and fails, the bondholder breaks out in a hollow, hoarse laugh, 
and exclaims, " markets and all belong to me. No difference 
who starves or who freezes. I get my interest and these people 
must pay their taxes." 

It is conceded everywhere that the aristocracy of Great Britain, 
in the exercise of power, deportment, and sense of justice, are 
eminently above the mouied oligarchy, from which they fly as 
before the jjestilence. 

The bondholder sends his children to school, but the property- 
holder pays his taxes. He drives his magnificent carriage over 
the roads laden with his privileged family, but the man who 
drives the dray, the two-horse wagon, and plows the land, pays 
the tax. He charters his conveyance and pays no tax. Mag- 
nificent public edifices are reared for public schools. He sends 
his children to school, but from his funded public stock, pays no 
taxes. The thief who steals his bonds is arraigned at the public 
expense, but the bondholder contributes nothing to the payment 
of the expenses consequent. 

No such monied aristocracy now exists on the face of the earth 
— none such ever existed any where else before. The Roth- 
childs of Europe, the Astors of America, the bankers, brokers, 
railroad, steamship, telegraph and great real estate owners of the 
world, have to run their risks of trade and perils of enterprize. 
Counties must keep up their organization, but he contributes 
nothing toward the payment of expenses. State Governments 
.must exist by levies upon the labors of the people, but the bond- 
holder contributes nothing. The bondholder is a gentleman 
dressed in purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously every 
day. Each returning half year brings his semi-annual income. 
The bondmen are a very different class of people, who are holden 
in their property, in their business, in their persons, in the bread 
they eat, in the clothes they wear, in the fuel they consume, in 
the books they read, in the light they burn, in the houses they 
live in, and the beds they lie on, for the payment of the annually 
accruing interest, on the debt due these bondholders. The bond- 
men pay an average of at least one hundred per cent., from re- 
tailers' profits ; and the stamps, duties and commissions which 



334 CEIMES OP THE CIVIL WAE. 

follow the raw material from the cotton field to the sewing ma- 
chine, from the wool on the back of the sheep to the retailers' 
counter, on everything they wear, in tariffs, for the double pur- 
pose of paying the interest on these bonds, and protecting New 
England manufacturers in extorting double price for their goods. 
He pays his landlord's income tax upon the rent of his houses, 
and has the stamp and all other duties, apparently paid by the 
capitalist, added to the first cost of every commodity, ate, drank 
and Avorn, by himself and family. The landlord adds it to his 
rent ; the butcher adds it to his meat bill ; the baker adds it to 
his loaf; the wood and coal merchant adds it to the price of his 
fuel ; the druggist adds it to his medicines ; the lawyer, physi- 
cian, school-master and minister, add it to their fee bill ; the rail- 
road, steamboat and coachman add it to your fare ; the merchant 
adds it to your shroud ; the sexton adds it to the price of your 
grave ; the monument-builder charges it upon your tombstone, 
and then, with retrospective grasp, this system of monstrous tax- 
ation covers the margin of your will with stamps, and transmits 
its odious incumbrances and curses to your children as an inheri- 
tance forever. As the towering pyramid, whose lofty spire is raised 
above the clouds to bask in eternal sunlight, rests upon the rough 
granite that is hidden in the sands, so these bondholders, who 
have the first mortgage upon the property of the United States, 
elevated far above responsibility to revenue laws, rest their for- 
tunes upon the strong, laboring masses, who produce the wealth 
of the country, and are consumed in the taxes, rents, extortions 
and usury of landlords, manufacturers, tax-gatherers and excise- 
men, who are mere middlemen to hand over the products of labor 
from the industry of the country to the bondholders. This is 
the way that the abundance of paper money finds its way from 
the field and shop of the producer, into the coffer and treasury of 
the consumer. This is the modus operandi of the passage of the 
products of Western labor into the hands of Eastern monopolies 
— the answer to the query why it is, in the incredible profusion 
of a paper currency, the Western people are pressed for money, 
and seeking relief in vain. The bondholders are placing the 
people in very much the same condition with the old plantation 
*' slave." As the "slaves" had their holidays to spend their 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 335 

annual earnings in social glee, the Western tax-payers have a 
fortnight of plenty at the sales of the pork and wool crops, after 
which they are kept upon a perpetual strain, seeking credit and 
fighting off debts that devour them with interests and obstruct 
their business. 

Never before has a class distinction been made so obnoxious 
and disgusting. Without intelligence, without culture, without 
hospitality, witliout honor, an ignorant, pretentious, moneyed 
aristocracy are supported, by the toil of the poor, and none so 
poor as not to contribute at least one-half of their subsistence to 
pay these bondholders. There is no escape from this drag-net of 
despotism, except in dispensing with food, raiment, fire and shel- 
ter. Death is your only hope of relief, and the grave the only 
avenue to the house of refuge and temple of security against the 
voracious jaws of this infernal system. This tribute laid upon 
property, this blackmail levied upon poverty, this punishment 
inflicted upon industry, this outrage upon justice, equality and 
God, this premium otfered to stock-gambling, this subsidy obse- 
quiously given to capital, this reward bestowed upon idleness, 
this oligarchy based upon human suffering and human corrup- 
tion, this grand gulf yawning between the West and the East, 
this impassible mountain between capital and labor, this startling 
universal robbery is paid over from log cabins to brown-stone 
fronts, from the cellar and garret to suburban mansions, from the 
toil-worn laborer, who drives the dray and two-horse wagon, to 
the gentleman Avho rides in his carriage, four horses, postillions 
and footmen, from plain plank floors to Brussels carpets, from 
lindsey-woolsey to cashmere and silks; spinning-wheels liand it 
over to pianos, and horny hands to silk gloves. Each new year a 
new middle-man becomes necessary to your existence. In all 
the departments of manufacture, and business, and trade, the rich 
will grow richer, the poor will grow poorer, until they sink be- 
neath the crushing weight of tariffs, taxes, imposts and stamp 
duties. Such a system of taxation — which exempts the rich 
and oppresses the poor, which fosters capital and oppresses labor, 
has never been imposed upon any other people under heaven. 
To continue this system for twenty years, without mitigation, 
would produce rebellion in Eussia, Austria, Turkey, or China. 



336 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

For two years, the blind leading the blind, have been groping in 
the dark for imaginary causes for the scarcity of money ; the high 
prices, the independence of the rich, the precarious condition of 
the poor, and the general suffering of all. The shallowest reas- 
ons have been given, the most ridiculous causes have been 
charged, and the most absurd remedies have been proposed for 
the relief of the unhealthy and dangerous condition of public 
affairs. The causes of our increasing poverty are manifest to 
every political economist, and are fully analyzed above. 

This funded system is replete with fraud and oppression of 
every character. It supports idle men in their idleness and 
makes them respectable and powerful, because they are idle. " Like 
the lilies of the valley, they toil not, neither do they spin ; yet 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." These 
idle gentlemen crowd the watering-places in the summer season 
to taunt the cholera in their security. In the winter, they retire 
to first-class hotels, and dine, and sup, and breakfast on costly 
dishes, and make the tour of Europe, and visit the Holy Land, 
and make extravagant purchases because they have not where- 
withal to bestow their riches. The days are too long and the 
nights are too inconvenient to afford their wonted sleep. Opera 
houses, theatres and fashionable resorts, absorb their time; gouts, 
dyspepsia and fashionable diseases, close up their career to the 
general satisfaction of mankind. 

The government has made it their interest to be idle ; any in- 
vestment of their capital would endanger their comparative pros- 
perity. The government has done much more for them than 
they could possibly do for themselves. If these idlers had placed 
the even dollar against the even dollar, the rates of interest al- 
lowed on the bonds would forbid the temerity of further adven- 
ture as unnecessary and reckless ; but the investment of one dol- 
lar to secure three, with the interest on three dollars is the very 
highest rate of untaxed interest ever known from governments to 
creditors. The government offers to these men a premium for 
their idleness, which they accept and enjoy. 

But the iniquity of the idleness of the bondholders is augmen- 
ted by the idleness of the capital which they have locked up in 
their coffers, which produces nothing, contributes to the produc- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 337 

tion of nothing, encourages tlie production of nothing. It 
neither builds cities, extends railroads, or improves farms. 

If cities are built, the extravagant rates of interest must con- 
sume the profits of the labor employed, and devour the capital 
invested ; and by the cunning jugglery of the capitalist, who 
manipulates the money of the idle men, issued in bank notes, se- 
cured upon these idle bonds, in nine cases out of ten, after the 
building is ate up by usury and extortion, the genius of the 
architect, the labor of the mechanic and the enterprise of the 
builder, foil a prey to the royal power of the bondholder, who 
lakes possession of his game with the same confidence and non- 
chalance of the old traj^per who has caught his new game in the 
old trap, and would have been disappointed, if it had not fallen 
an easy prey to his bait. 

If railroads are built, it is upon some such fraudulent scheme 
as inveioles whole communities to subscribe vast amounts of 
money to be given in mortgage to these idlers, usurers and ex- 
tortioners, and when they are placed in running order, at the 
merest nominal sum transferred to the mortgagee, as an inheri- 
tance, to endure to all time, transmitted to their children and 
children's children, who will live at ease ujjon the fare paid by 
the children of those who built the road, and were robbed of its 
income and control. 

If farms are improved, the heavy rate of interest consumes 
the value of the improvement and trenches upon the principal, 
until the sunburnt pioneer grows weary of the vexation, and 
gladly gives up farm and improvement, and makes a new trial 
on the frontier for a home and burial-place. 

This funded system is the lion in the lair, giving out his illness 
that all of the beasts of the forest may offer him their condo- 
lence; but the tracks of the visitors all point one way; none ever 
return. 

These idle men not only hold in reserve their idle capital from 
the business of the country, but this capital eats, though it works 
not. 

The cattle, and swine, and horses, and sheep, work and feed 
them. The fields of grain, and mines of ore, and muscles of the 
million, are their servants. The orchard, and vine, and bushes, 
22 



338 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

yield their yearly fruits to add new revenues to the monster, 
whose open mouth is annually closed upon everything which may 
be measured by value. 

These fund-men command labor to feed, clothe and support 
them. Like the sloth, they coil themselves up and fill them- 
selves with the fruits gathered by the hands of others, or like 
that other aristocratic gentleman, the swine, live only to enjoy 
the sublime pleasures of life, to eat, drink, and sleep, without 
labor. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 339 



CHAPTER Y. 

The Funding System destroys a Stable Currency. 

The existence of the funding system has given as its first fruits, 
the entire destruction of money ; and concentrates even paper 
money in the centres and drains it from the extremities of trade. 

A STARTLING} FACT — NO SPECIE IN CIRCULATION. 

There cannot be a more startling fact presented to any people 
than this, that in the richest gold country upon earth, there is 
not one gold dollar in ordinary circulation, notwithstanding 
the Constitution of the United States has made gold and silver 
the only legal tender for the payment of debts. The constitu- 
tional question of banking need not be argued; it is sufficient to 
state the Constitution in its own language by prohibition and 
authority. 

Its prohibition, " No State shall * * * coin money, emit 
bills of credit, (or) make anything but gold and silver coin a 
tender in payment of debts." — Art. II., See. 10. 

It authorizes the Congress of the United States "to coin money, 
regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the stand- 
ards of Aveights and measures ; to provide for the punishment of 
counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United 
States."— ^r^. I., Sec. 8. 

These brief, yet comprehensive paragraphs embody all that is 
contained in the Constitution, from which are deduced these 
manifest truths : 

1st. To coin money does not imply the right to establish 
banks. 

2d. Promises to pay by any j)erson or corporation, cannot by 
any construction of law be metamorphosed into money. Promi- 
ses to pay are not money, they are credits. 



340 CRIMES OF THE CIVII. WAE. 

Money is the evidence of Avealth, held to represent vahies. 
Credit is the evidence of poverty, held to represent indebtedness. 
Money has a positive value, fixed and stamped upon it by law, 
which, when used in commerce, commands its specific value; 
notes or credits are in themselves, nothing but the jiromises de- 
pendent upon the solvency or insolvency of others for their 
value. Money is the standard value of commerce, by which it 
is measured and controlled ; credit is a beggar upon commerce for 
time to pay for goods taken up in advance of payment. Credit 
is just as much money as the shadow of a house is a house — its 
picture, nothing more. Money is payment beyond which no in- 
quiry is made; credit is the promise of money, without the pay- 
ment of which it is entirely worthless. By the common consent 
of mankind, money, which is an imperishable certificate of value, 
made of gold and silver, is the accredited agent and vehicle of 
commerce among all the civilized nations of the earth. Paper 
money has a limited arena of circulation, with varying value, 
having no value except that which may attach to the character 
of the payer. Paper money is a promise to pay on demand ; if 
it is not to be paid on demand, it may never be paid ; if never 
paid, it is worthless. Money is perpetually valuable. Money is 
coined. Bank notes are printed ; under the Constitution of the 
United States, they cannot be made money. But " National 
Bank notes " are bills of credit for which the Government of the 
United States has no power to make itself responsible. Bank 
notes are printed promises of the bill usurer and extortioner, to 
pay what everybody in America knows that they can't pay, won't 
pay, and don't intend to pay, and only promise to pay to give 
them character to rob, cheat and overreach the people of the 
country, under pretext of furnishing them with money which 
they do not furnish them, which they cannot furnish them, be- 
cause they have no money to pay their notes, and after years of 
smooth swindling, will break up in a general robbery. This 
National Bank money gives no security for its payment, other 
than promises to pay. It is the reflected shadow of a shadow. 
But why this false pretence of money to carry on the business of 
a great country, whose commerce is commensurate with the hai*- 
itable globe ? 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 341 

1. It is not because we have no gold or silver. No country 
upon the earth is so rich in the precious metals as ours. 

2. Because we use a paper money which no other people will 
use, our gold and silver are drained from us to foreign lands, 
and worthless paper, monstrous frauds and visionary prices, rule 
the markets of the country. The result is manifest, that there is 
no gold left in the country. 

3. The banks don't need gold or silver for their business. One 
promise to pay redeems another promise to i^ay adinfinitum ; 
just as the old tavern-keeper and his wife drank up a barrel of 
whiskey on a two-pence which passed from one to the other 
as they alternately played the landlord and customer, and had 
but the two-pence left for the liquor drank. This condition of 
the banks leaves them without either gold or silver in vaults; 
— indeed, they make no such pretension. 

4. But whilst the country is drained of gold, with an incredi- 
ble folly, they have placed it in the hands of unscrupulous vil- 
lains, who have mortgaged the entire available property of the 
country to bankers, brokers, usurers, extortioners, and foreign 
Shylocks, to pay a debt which is drawing a double interest, — 
interest in gold, — to be paid to the bankers who use the bonds as 
a pretext for banking, and then interest on the bank notes which 
are borrowed out of the banks, as a currency for the people. 
Such is the absolute scarcity of the precious metals in the coun- 
try, that no debts are paid and no business transacted with gold 
and silver. The poor, who would lay up money for old age, 
have to make heavy sacrifices to get gold, or those who buy pro- 
ducts raised in other climes, or who would visit foreign lands, 
have to enter into the brokers' merciless jaws, to be devoured in 
exchange and usury. To add to all of the other follies in a sys- 
tem wliere not one sensible thing has been done, our gold wealth 
has been transferred to English bankers and Chinese miners. 

EXTRAORDINARY CONDITION OF THINGS. 

Not. less amazing is it that where Congress has made a promise 
to pay a legal tender, that kind of money is becoming so scarce 
that complaints come up from every part of the country that 



342 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

money is tight, and business is embarrassed and lags in conse- 
quence. We need not look around for the cause of this state of 
things. The Government has issued an immense amount of 
bonds, which have fastened upon us the English funding system 
with all its odious features, crimes and enormities, draughts upon 
our productive strength sufficient to absorb the annual labor of 
the country. In all the evil devices of faro bank and steamboat 
poker, nothing like the American system of revenue exists 
among any rational people. This condition of things challenges 
our examination. In the cities of New York, Boston, Phila- 
delphia, and the East, paper money exists in the greatest abun- 
dance, and can find no permanent investment in business, but 
seeks it in bonds. In the Western States, money is so scarce 
that there is not enough for business, the payment of taxes and 
the improvement of the country ; since the bounty-money dis- 
tributed among the soldiers has been exhausted. This disparity 
of condition between the two sections is not accidental, but is 
the necessary offspring of a funding system, which gives the 
property of one part of the country in taxation and mortgage to 
the other. By this process, as fast as the people of the agricul- 
tural districts sell their products, the money is at once transfer- 
red to the tax-gatherer, in payment of taxes, and the tax-gatherer 
hands it over to the treasurer, who j)ays it out to the bondholder 
in liquidation of the interest on his bonds. This process is an- 
nual in his income ; it is perpetual in his daily expenses, and 
universal upon all that he consumes. The process of exhaustion 
has been going imperceptibly on until the farms are stripped of 
their finest herds, and the agricultural regions are sinking under 
the pressure. 

Is^ The interest on the public debt amounts to several times 
the sum necessary to administer the Government of the United 
States with economy. 

There is included in the debt the gold-bearing bonds, the 
greenback-bearing bonds, the compound interest treasury notes, 
and the various honest claims, which have been long due, and de- 
ferred claims, which, by collusion with the heads of departanents, 
are allowed. To all this you must add : — 

2d. The assessors, collectors, clerks, overseers, detectives and 



CHIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 343 

other detestable appendages of arbitrary power, wliich are of 
themselves a consuming army of cormorants, eating out our sub- 
stance, and destroying our financial resources and prosperity. 

As an additional reserve corps, to be supported by the people 
and paid for extorting from them in the exacting usury of the 
bank, we may add to the list of vampires who suck the blood 
from the poor ; bank presidents, cashiers, tellers and clerks, direc- 
tors, attorneys, agents and lobby members employed to corrupt 
the legislatures of the country, and wrest the representative 
power of the people from their own hands, and employ it for 
their own destruction at the public expense. 

3d The bonds pay no taxes, and saddle the payment upon the 
labor and land of the country. 

After this manner is the scarcity of paper money among the 
people reduced : — 

1. The greenbacks, which draw no interest, are converted into 
bonds which draw interest. The result is, that the conversion 
of every million of dollars makes just that much more to pay, 
and that much less to pay it in. 

2. As the amount of greenbacks is lessened, and the amount 
of bonds is increased, the value of the interest and bond is each 
increased, and the amount of debt in that ratio becomes greater, 
and by exacting gold to pay the bonds, the debt would be nearly 
triple the amount of itself, as contracted in greenbacks. The 
bondholders and bankers combine to make greenbacks scarce, to 
make bonds valuable. Hence the scarcity of paper money amidst 
its plenty. 



344 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Funding System will Concentrate the Landed Estates of the 

Country. 

The oligarchy created under the funding system, will not be 
content with gathering the fruits of the soil and the wages of 
labor ; merely they will here, as in all the other countries cursed 
with this system, buy up manors, estates, and Avhole regions of 
country, to the exclusion of the poor, whom they are engaged 
in impoverishing. 

The country is utterly, hopelessly bankrupt. We OAve more 
than we are worth, and spend more than we make. That is 
bankruptcy itself in its worst, most dangerous and wickedest 
form. That is the most absolute repudiation which cannot be 
paid. That is the most sickening insolvency which approaches 
you to assure you that it would gladly pay you if it could, but 
is sorry to say that it cannot. He has not the means, and can- 
not control them to pay you. This is our condition in few words. 
But the worst is not yet on us, but is slowly approaching, with 
the heavy, steady tread of death. Last year the incomes were 
not as heavy as they were the year before, and this year not as 
heavy as they were last, and next year they will be much lighter 
still. "What then ? It is intended to get through with the next 
Presidential election, and carry out the military programme laid 
down by the present Congress, and rule the peoj^le by force. 
Then what? They must levy a land tax, instead of an income 
tax. And then what ? They will let the land go to sale, and 
then let the bondholders buy up the land for taxes, and pay the 
purchase money with coupons, and pay the taxes next year with 
other coupons, and let the owners of the land rent and be ten- 
ants under the bondholder who buys it up. The land tax was 
first laid in the beginning of the war, and millions of acres 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 345 

would have been sold and placed beyond redemption, but the 
shrewd capitalists of the country foresaw that the war would be 
arrested in that event. The direct taxation of lands would 
frighten the people, which would defeat the purpose of mort- 
gaging the whole country to their funding system. They post- 
poned the land tax until the coupons would accumulate so 
as to buy up the lands, at their sales for taxes, which will 
give the bondholders both the lands and bonds. In every res- 
pect, this land scheme resembles the workings of the feudal sys- 
tem which the Congress of the United States are attempting 
to practically engraft upon the American system. This is pre- 
cisely the way that the whole landed estates have passed out of the 
hands of the masses of the people into the hands of the land- 
lords of Great Britaiu and the continent; and just in this way is 
it contemplated that the real property of the United States shall 
pass out of the hands of the middle classes into the hands of the 
bondholders in this country, and make the two distinctive classes, 
landlords and tenants, absolute here as they are in Europe. Al- 
ready immense fortunes are transmitted from parents to children, 
to continue for all time; and poverty is, in like manner, trans- 
mitted to the poor, who inherit nothing but the taxes imposed 
upon their parents. 

The claptrap of negro-voting is only to reduce the poor white 
people down to the level of the negroes, that they may be op- 
pressed without complaining, and when they complain that they 
will have no power to resist — and here, just as in Europe, make 
their dependence a sure guaranty of submission to the lords and 
task-masters. There is in the United States no intelligent body 
of the people who believe the negro the equal of the white man ; 
who believe the negro capable of self-government in partnership 
with the white man, who believe that the negro can be highly 
cultivated, who do not know that the negro has never governed 
himself, that civilization yields to barbarism and Christianity to 
heathenism, wherever the experiment is enforced. But these 
men would surrender the whole system of Christianity and civ- 
ilization to gain a momentary service of the negro at the polls, 
to make the bonded system permanent and perpetual. Such are 
the delusions of hope and the corruptions of party influence, 



346 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

that with these startling strides to power staring them in the 
face, they are unwilling to believe the warning until it is too late 
to relieve their clanger. When told that their lands must be 
held for the payment of taxes, and finally sold to pay them, they 
reply : " But we will not bid when our lands are put up to sale." 
And then what? That is just what the bondholder wants. 
When you won't bid on the land, then the bondholder will bid 
on it, so that it will pass out of your hands into his hands, and 
there remain. " But," says my Republican farmer friend, " we 
will combine and prevent them bidding oif our land at the tax 
sales," Be not too hasty. These land sales will be made by the 
United States Marshal at a great distance from the homes of the 
poor people, who can't combine against them. But look to it. 
There is now in preparation Paine's military bill, which will 
place a large military force to guard the demands of the bond- 
liolder, enforce the sales of the Marshal, and drive back all op- 
j30sition. For, remember, this work commenced with the sword, 
will continue with the sword until ended by the sword. But 
when these sales take place, there is no redemption of lands for 
the poor. The title of the bondholder will be complete. It is 
for this very purpose that the present Congress want to confiscate 
the Southern lands to divide them among the negroes; first, to 
secure their votes to pass oppressive laws ; and, second, to secure 
negro soldiers to keep down insurrection among the poor whites, 
when the impoverished treasury has forced their lands into the 
market. 

So, early as the first years of the war, the entire control of the 
lands of the country were compassed by the stock-gamblers, and 
the funding system amply sufficient to swallo\v everything, was 
the proper mortgage to foreclose and conclude them. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 347 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Funding System Creates Distrust between Capital and Labor. 

Society is now in its most perplexing condition — just verg- 
ing upon anarchy, those elements that nature has placed in har- 
mony, are now in unnecessary conflict and threaten to destroy 
each other. The laboring masses are weary of perpetually toil- 
ing with but little recreation, like cattle, in the tread-mill. They 
desire shorter periods of labor and longer periods of rest, recrea- 
tion and instruction. This is not only right, but it is eminently 
desirable. Very naturally have they looked to the amelioration 
of their own condition, and quite as naturally are they seeking 
the means and time for the support and instruction of their fam- 
ilies. The contractors, of course, would like to have as much 
work done as they can get for the amount of money paid, and 
shrewd business men generally calculate these things with exact- 
ness, and no legislative interference in fixing times of labor ever 
can remedy evils so deeply rooted as the one which now afflicts 
and threatens to overwhelm us. 

In all of the conflicts of labor and capital, capital gets the 
better; because capital strikes quietly, but hurls her deadly blows 
with vehemence unseen, and ten to one, that the laborers are set 
to quarreling with each other, Avhilst ca2)ital goes on eating up 
their substance. 

Somebody has struck a terrible blow at the laborer, and he is 
staggering under it and reeling upon the verge of ruin. You 
can see it manifest in the high rents on cheap houses, in the high 
rates of poor living, in the high prices of flimsy clothing, in 
the extravagant fare on the railroads, steamboats and stage 
coaches, in the coarse raiment of his children, in the general 
poverty of his life. 

But in all this the contractor suffers with the mechanic, and 



348 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

it is always unfortunate that they who have a common interest 
and common suffering should fall out by the way at a time when 
they ought to unite against a common enemy which lies in wait 
to destroy them. This is not all. In the present state of affairs, 
both workmen and contractors will soon fall to the ground to- 
gether, unless there is a change in our affairs. 

But let us return and look after the real cause of the trouble, 
which now threatens. 

First. — We have a debt which, with all of its responsibilities 
and ramifications, according to the estimate of Thaddeus Stevens, 
is $4,000,000,000. This debt is being funded, and is drawing a 
heavier interest than any other similar debt under any other 
Government in the world. This interest has to be paid. It has 
to be paid with money. This money has to be earned by the 
men who labor and create property, because the Government re- 
ceives no taxes from the bonds or other forms of capital employed 
in its security. This money has to be raised in tariffs and direct 
taxes in their various forms. The laboring men who are com- 
plaining of the contractors, are now paying full one hundred 
per cent, upon all they eat, wear and consume. This seems hard, 
and hard it is. Tlie laborer complains of the contractor, but the 
contractor is paying just the same exorbitant rates, and is in 
danger of soon being unable to carry on his work. Then the 
laborer turns round to complain of the farmer, but the farmer is 
the victim of the same oppression. He pays taxes, stamps, tar- 
iffs and incomes, until it is with difficulty that he lives. Then 
all combine to complain of railroads, steamboats, &c., but they 
are struggling with the same monster, — the great debt, and all 
suffer together. Then, practically the laborer works ten- hours 
and gets pay for five, because the other five hours are given to 
the manufacturer and the tax-gatherer. 

First — You have to pay this enormous interest, which ought 
to support five such Governments. 

Second — You have to take bread out of your children's 
mouths ; clothes off of their backs ; wood and coal off of your 
fire, and rent from your house, to pay to keep up the Negro Bu- 
reau, which costs as much as the general Government used to 
cost in the best days of the Republic. 



CKIMES OF THE CIVir. WAR. 349 

Third — You have to share in like manner with the standhig 
army, appointed to trample down the Southern States, and which 
is intended, under the Paine Military bill, to be employed to keep 
down strikes in the Northern cities, coal-mines and manufacto- 
ries. After you have made this decimation of your living, then 
you are called upon to give another portion to keep up the stand- 
ing army of revenue officers. 

Fourth — You have to keep an army of Congressmen, who, 
instead of relieving you of debt, are giving away the public 
lands, and accepting bribes to vote away your liberty. These 
draughts upon your labor will keep farmers, contractors, me- 
chanics and everybody else poor. Here lies the evil. Now for 
the remedy. Vote down the present extravagant system of gov- 
ernment. Vote down standing armies, which you are now l^ay- 
ing to destroy the South, and ruin the trade of the West ; vote 
down tariffs, vote down the present corruj)t system of legislation, 
vote down the men who are keeping up strife among you. 

Sujipose you were to imitate the demagogue who wanted five 
pecks in a bushel when he bought, and three pecks when he sold ; 
the price regulates the value. 

AVhat the laborers really want is to get the most money for the 
least labor, so as to be able to save it for themselves and families. 
This you cannot do until you get rid of this taxation. 

Political economy is a system as exact as geometry, not to be 
overturned by mere ranting. We therefore advise the laboring 
masses to go to your firesides, study your interests and rights, 
and learn to protect them. 

Dismiss from your lead, ignorant babblers who never did a 
day's work in their life, and know nothing more of the science 
of political economy than children ; but believe you to be igno- 
rant and play the demagogue with their balderdash, or contract- 
ors, farmers and laborers will all go down together. The first 
and only thing to be done is to get rid of taxation, which grinds 
us all into the very dust. The ballot-box is your place to seek 
a remedy. But whilst the very best half of the people are dis- 
franchised, and the richest half of the United States is in ruin 
and ashes, starving and helpless, and the whole available capital 
of the country is either idle on your hands or drawing incredible 
usury, you have no relief. 



350 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

These things "will be no better, but will continue growing 
worse under this misrule, until the financial system is ruined, 
lying in a common heap with the laws. Constitution, and liber- 
ties of the people. Credit implies debt. We have thousands 
of millions of credit, on the market, which represents our debt. 
But debt implies poverty, and we have mistaken our poverty for 
wealth, which it is not ; and unless we get rid of this debt and 
taxation, we may work sixteen hours in the day, and still be 
pinched with cold, gaunt with famine, and not be able to save 
ourselves from nakedness and want. 

As in medicine, so in politics; all specifics are delusive and 
dangerous. Whenever the currency, which is the blood of the 
commercial world, is pure, then commerce and industry of every 
kind will thrive. 

Thrown to the extremity of the whole body politic^ every 
function Avill be healthy and every organ active. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 351 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Sectional Character of the Funding System. 

The people of the United States have just emerged, bat not 
recovered, from a sectional war of fearful magnitude and relent- 
less ferocity. 

The pretext for the war was the conflict between Northern and 
Southern labor ; the one free, the otlier slave labor. 

It is, not less remarkable than the war itself, that its closing 
legislation has created an issue between the AVest and the East, in 
Avhich Western labor and agricultural industry have allied the 
South and the AVest, to make common cause against Eastern cap- 
ital and manufacturing machinery. 

The most wonderful improvements of modern times, are those 
applied to the cultivation of the soil and the gathering of the 
crops. The reaper, mower, raker, binder, pitcher, thresher, 
cleaner, and the other varied machinery and implements of hus- 
bandry, are so many insentient intelligences, called up by the 
genius of man to minister to his support and relieve his muscles; 
armies of active laborers, who ask neither food nor raiment, 
which are proof against disease, and may be reproduced at pleas- 
ure in all time to come. 

In the true spirit of progress, these offsprings of invention and 
testimonials of our divinity, should have been co-laborers to 
assist the producers in the most perfect development, of the incal- 
culable resources of the country. 

But, unfortunately, these mute helpmates have been used in 
competition with agriculture, and the changes wrought in this 
revolution of industry, have added comparatively nothing to the 
relative wages of labor, or the diffusion of increasing prosperity 
among the agricultural classes of the country ; but that it may 
be seen in the more costly carriages, the more stately mansions, 



352 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

the richer costumes and more arrogant air of the capitalists 
who own the railroads and steamships which transport your pro- 
duce from your door, the telegraph which informs or deceives 
you in the matter of its value, the bank which decrees its mar- 
ket price, and the untaxed bonds which absorb it in annual in- 
terest, and the Congress and legislature who throw their legis- 
lative dice, and gamble upon the liberty and labor of the coun- 
try. 

The funding system has changed our entire relation to the 
East, as the war has changed the relation of the North to the 
South. 

THE EASTERN MANUFACTURERS DEVOUR WESTERN LABOR. 

Eastern capital is a vast, dry sponge, dipped into the fountains 
of Western labor, to absorb them. Eastern cupidity, hmk, hun- 
gry and voracious, like Pharoah's lean kine, comes down upon 
the burdened grain fields, full cattle, sheep and horses of tlie 
West, in each season, to devour and destroy us, eat us up, and 
return half famished again, no nearer satisfied than before. They 
meet us with deception, and our people hail their deceit, and em- 
brace it. Under pretence of freeing black barbarian slaves turned 
loose to starve, they have enslaved the industrial pursuits of the 
whole ]\Iississippi Valley. 

The valleys of the Nile have no such corn-fields, the mines 
of Ophir have no such gold, the hills of Judoa had no such 
hei'ds of cattle, Egypt had no such swine, and Job had uo such 
flocks of sheep as ours. 

The commercial power and importance of this immense valley 
of alluvial and mineral lands, is not only incalculable, but in- 
comprehensible. Our iron ore from Lake Superior, is transport- 
ed to the very gateway of the iron mountains of Virginia and 
Pennsylvania, such is the superiority (and does not itself greatly 
excel the iron of Missouri,) for manufacturing. Our lead mines 
of Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois, are outside of the 
range of competition. Our resources of wealth are measureless 
and increasing. But such is the servile condition of the West- 
ern States, that New England absorbs annually all our profits. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 353 

and levies new mortgages upon our farms with enormous per- 
centage, as a growing debt. 

This conflict was begotten of the funding system and must co- 
exist with it ; all mere subterfuges of taxing the bonds will 
scarcely improve it, much less cure it. When the wages of labor 
and the products of the soil of a great country are at once trans- 
ferred to a distant country, it brings nothing in return. Bank- 
ruptcy must be imminent and immediate. The process of drain- 
ing is simple and exhaustive. The farmer pays over to the mer- 
chant, the merchant to the manufacturer, and the manufacturer 
divides it with the banker, who is also the bondholder. This 
takes half he raises ; the other half is paid to the tax-payer, and 
the tax-payer pays it to the treasurer, and the treasurer pays it 
to the bondholder. In this way, the bondholder gets all that we 
pay for our goods, which is not absorbed by the manufacturer, 
and the interest on the bank notes issued, and gets all of the 
taxes not consumed by the assessors, collectors and spies, to pay 
interest on his bonds. In this way the whole earnings of the 
people of the AYest pass into the hands of the East, and the 
laborer acts as the servant of capital. 

This condition of things has been induced by monstrous 
crimes, which will be atoned for in fearful retribution. 

THE riEST CRIME OF NEW ENGLAND AGAINST AGRICULTURE — 
SHE DESTROYED OUR NATURAL MARKET. 

The people of the immediate Mississippi Valley were corn 
and hog growers, mule and cattle raisers. The vast natural 
meadows opened up herding grounds, unsurpassed in the natural 
history of the Avorld. Scarcely had the buffalo taken up his 
westward line of march, until the Devonshire and Durham cov- 
ered the plains in such multitudes and droves, as promised meat 
and leather for the whole continent. Wherever the furrow was 
turned, the ploughman was repaid with a return which invited 
immigration from every part of the world. Such Avas the char- 
acter and employment of the people from Lake Pepin to St. 
Louis, east and west of the Mighty Waters. 

They were the natural feeders of the people of the lower Mis- 
23 



354 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

sissippi, Avho were raising cotton, sugar, hemp, tobacco, and rice. 
Our people were at peace with these people. They paid us well 
and promptly, and opened up for us a market sure, and per- 
petual. 

They sold their products to every monied country in the civ- 
ilized world, and paid us money for every thing they bought, and 
everything we raised they were anxious to buy. 

We both lived on the banks of the Mississippi, without great 
capital, with a small amount of labor, and at a trifling cost. 
Our people built barges, loaded them with corn, put their horses 
and cattle and swine on steamboats, and in a few days they sold 
their produce and made an early return. In this way we could 
have lived as peaceable neighbors forever. 

New England bought her cotton from our neighbors of the 
lower Mississippi. She wrought it into goods. We bought 
them and asked no questions. 

The manufacturers of New England grew rich, and shared 
the general prosperity of the country. With this she was not 
satisfied. She sent wicked men to disseminate mischief amons: 
the people. She made ojjcn, actual war upon the trooj)s of the 
United States, levied Avar upon the flag of the Union, as far back 
as 1856. She got bad and reckless men to engage in civil war 
in Kansas and Virginia, under John Brown, and the Governor 
of the State to furnish arms to begin it. The history is before 
you. Shame throws her mantle over these crimes, and blushes 
for the country. 

Through the instigation of New England, we sent troops to 
burn up the cotton fields. After the return of our troops, we 
had to burn up our own corn-fields, for there was nobody to buy 
our corn. We had ruined our only customers. We could not 
send our corn to New England, without selling five bushels at 
home to pay the freight of one bushel to market. 

The excuse of New England was, her conscientious scruples 
against the crime of human slavery. This was the merest pre- 
tence ; for, at the very time they were clamoring against the 
■wickedness of slavery, which separated families, the Governor 
of Massachusetts was engaged in sending ship loads of women 
away from the State, to hunt husbands on the slope of the Pacific, 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 355 

and mnny of whom landed in New York brothels. But New 
■England had a purpose in no wise inconsistent with lier early 
slave-trading history. This jiurpose was to divert our trade 
and enslave our labor, to pension manufacturers and create lord- 
lings in an untaxed, bonded aristocracy. This she accomplished 
by her first great crime 

After destroying our great highway to the markets of the 
world through the Mississippi, New England drove us into her 
market to be robbed by her carriers on the way, and by her mer- 
chants and manufacturers in the market place. 

THE SECOND CRIME OF NEW ENGLAND AGAINST WESTERN 
AGRICULTURE. 

When New England had baptised the floodtide of our mighty 
river with the richest blood of our young men, had inflamed the 
country into civil war, and blockaded our j)orts, we had but one 
customer left — New England. She owned the railroads, she 
watched the markets ; and if the price of wheat increased one 
cent, they would increase the price of freight two cents on the 
bushel, leaving us one cent less in the jtrice of the Avheat than 
before the rise. After having destroyed our natural highway 
to our natural market, she drove us to her artificial thoroughfare, 
and prevented the possibility of profit upon anything we had to 
sell or export; so that the benefits of an ordinary rise and fall 
of the market were not allowed to extend to us. A more com- 
plete vassalage of an agricultural to a manufacturing people is 
inconceivable. 

After New England had begun the war, she then inflamed the 
Western soldiers with incendiary harangues, and took the flower 
of the Western States to fight the bloody battles and endure the 
terrible campaigns in the swamps. 

AVhilst Massachusetts was hiring negroes in the South, Indians 
in the West, vagabonds and criminals in Europe, to fill her 
quota, the very best blood of the AVestern States went en masse 
to the war. It was a sorrowful picture to see our poor men 
burning up cotton, to return home and find their ragged families 
paying five prices for their muslin ; burning up sugar planta- 



356 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

tions, when their Avives and children were crying for saccharine 
to sweeten their coffee ; spreading desolation in the South to 
destroy ourselves and enrich New England. 

THE THIRD CRIME OF NEW ENGLAND AGAINST WESTERN AGEI- 

CULTUREjIN TAXING WESTERN MANUFACTURES BY EXCISE, 

WHILE EASTERN MANUFACTURES WERE PROTECTED 

BY HEAVY TARIFF DUTIES. 

The Corn States of the Mississippi Valley had no market for 
their corn. In the south, it could not be exported ; its bulk and 
weight forbade it. The cholera swept off their hogs by the mil- 
lion, and their corn was rotting in the crib and in the field, and 
would not pay the gathering. It was a cheap fuel. There was 
nothing left the people but to distil their corn, to put it in such 
form as to send it to market. This distilled corn is the basis of 
nearly every form of medicine ; is used in paints, for medical 
and mechanical purposes ; is a staple as necessary to legitimate 
business as iron or cloth. Yet while New England was demand- 
ing a tariff of fifty cents a yard on all cloths, coarse and fine, 
besides thirty-five per cent, ad valorem, quite doubling the price 
of all the clothing of the poor of the country, — the pretence was 
to protect domestic manufactures ; — she levied an excise duty of 
eight hundred per cent, upon the liquors manufactured for all 
medical and mechanical purposes in the AVestern States. The 
pretence was to prevent intoxication and crime, and the punish- 
ment of liquor dealers. The truth is. that the excise made all 
the old whisky dealers rich, and injured nobody except the West- 
ern people, who had a vast amount of corn they were under the 
necessity of selling at some price; and by this legislation were 
forced to sell it for a song, or use it for fuel. 

THE FOURTH CRIME OF NEW ENGLAND AGAINST WESTERN 
AGRICULTURE. 

After the destruction of the Southern market, the spread of the 
great swine plague, and the adoption of the monstrous excise system 
against high wine, the people of the AYestern States commenced 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 357 

wool -growing ui^on a most extensive scale, stocking their farms, 
at very heavy expense, Avitli the best. blood in Europe and Amer- 
ica ; building barns and sheds, and changing their former j^ur- 
buils, adapting their entire business and capital to the new enter- 
l)rise. Til is was, M'ith them, the commencement of this form of 
j)roduction. It was that very condition of things for which even 
general free trade men believed protection admissible. The pro- 
tection given to the manufacturers of woolefi goods was greater 
than had ever been exacted or demanded before in the history of 
manufacturers anywhere; and was under pretence of giving pro- 
tection, also, to the wool-growers : but in the very same bill tlie 
coarse wools, of which they manufacture their cloth, (which is 
])rotectcd at least one hundred per cent.) has an average duty of 
but little more than one per cent. This bill lets in coarse wool 
from South America to the destruction of wool-growing in this 
country ; is bought by New England manufacturers and sold to 
the poor people of the country with an added tariff of one hun- 
dred per cent. ; at the same stroke, smiting down the wool-grow- 
er and the wearer of their maunfactures. This final blow leaves 
the Western farmer no business, which is not absorbed by New 
England. 

THE IMPOSITIONS UPOX THE AVESTERN PEOPLE. 

To delude the AVestern people, New England proposes slight 
tariffs upon those articles of production, which it is impossible 
that competition should import from abroad ; which are, however, 
consumed by competition at home and for the protection of 
which, tariffs afford no remedy whatever. 

Suj)):)ose a duty of twenty cents were imposed upon a bushel 
of foreign corn ; this could give no protection to any corn raised 
in the Mississippi valley, because the competition comes from the 
farmers who surround him. 

There is a gentleman, surnamed gaunt famine, who Avith a 
coarse indifference to good society, always improves your market, 
but leaves you nothing to sell. 

The Eastern capitalists have taught Western producers to be- 
lieve that favorite theory of tyrants, that " every new tax creates 



358 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

a new ability in the subject to bear it, and each increase of public 
burden increases proportionately the industry of the [)eople." 

But like all other increases of industry, it imposes new tasks 
upon the old laborers to increase the facilities for the groser en- 
joyment of the rich. 

These tasks increased, fall with such weight upon the people, 
that they sink under it. 

They have to work harder, without living better than before, 
realizing less for their labor. 

These complications of sectional difficulties must be simplified 
to be understood. 

The great civil war upon the Southern States was covertly 
directed against the West, because the vassalage of the South to 
the East assures the vassalage of the West to the East. 

If the East can disfranchise the South, they need not disfran- 
chise the West, nor fear the issue in a contest between the sec- 
tions. She is now the most powerful. 

The East now holds the West in her hands with a deadly 
grasp. 

With the South disfranchised, the West subsidized, the East- 
ern States lose the resistance of the one, purchase the acquies- 
cence of the other, through their representation, and leave the 
people powerless, bound in chains forged by themselves. 

The robberies and oppressions of the tariff, are oppressions of 
ihe AVest by the East. 

The robberies and swindles of the bonds, are swindles of the 
East upon the West. 

The usuries, extortions and exchanges, are Eastern drafts upon 
AVestern industry. 

The machinery of capital is complete, and opens up an avenue 
through which Western labor flows in a steady stream into the 
reservoirs of Eastern capital. 

The real and sham Insurance companies of Eastern capital, levy 
a heavy tribute upon everything which may be consumed by 
flood or fire. 

New England owns the railroads, telegraphs, and every other 
means of transportation. 

She holds mortgages upon the new cities of the lakes. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 35U 

The towns and villages of the frontier, are under Eastern 
domination and capital, which has been gathered from bounties 
paid to fisheries, and duties imposed upon manufactured goods. 

Eastern capital controls the Western State legislation, courts 
and literature. 

The national banks are Eastern banks, created to control 
Western business and absorb AVestern labor. 

Under the same dictation, the President would exclude every 
one owning over $20,000, from general amnesty ; driving the 
capital from the Southern States, already reduced to beggary. 

All legislative protection of the East is at the expense of the 
West. 

Between the interests of the East and the West, there is noth- 
ing in common. The people have different pursuits, different 
population and different markets. These markets are so remote 
from each other that it is a matter demonstrable that we may 
send our produce to Liverpool by way of New Orleans, and pay 
all expenses, contingent and direct, at a less cost and greater 
profit than we can transport it to Boston, through our almost 
perfect railroad system, under Eastern control. 

This is true of the whole country west of the Mississippi and 
south of the Ohio rivers. 

But this need not be so if a generous system of legislation and 
just employment of capital is made. 

The protective tariffs inure entirely to the benefit of the East 
at the expense of the West : because manufacturing is sectional, 
confined to the East. 

The West have no facilities for manufacturing such articles as 
we import from the East. 

The W^estera States are too remote from the East to exchange 
commodities upon terms as favorable as they could with Europe 
under fair reciprocity treaties. 

But precisely the same relation borne to New England by the 
West, is sustained by the South. 

Between the West and South there Is a community of Interest 
which makes them tenants In common of the great agricultural 
regions of the United States. 

The difference is In the manual force which created and di- 
rected their respective labor. 



360 . CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

In the West, by the free Caucasian controlling as well as 
working his field, he is the actuary of his own plantation and 
business. The South use the labor of the ignorant, barbarous 
people, placed under their guardianship. Between these systems 
there Avas the most perfect harmony ; in their operations, they 
exhibited the most perfect symmetry. 

Every Constitutional Amendment proposed, is an amendment 
aimed at the West. 

Tlie payment of the debt must be by the West, which pro- 
duces everything, and pays the tariffs, &c. 

The inventive genius of villainy could suggest no new scheme 
of plunder which has not been prominent in the embarassment 
of trade and the robbery of the West by the East. 

Every principle of economy urged as a plea for the protec- 
tion of herself, is applied to the oppression of the West. 

The East demands protection for her own manufactures, and 
offer, as apology, that manufactures are essential to national 
wealth. In the same sessions of legislation, she demands penal 
taxation for articles manufactured iu the Western States, and 
pleads that they contribute to the moral evils of the country. 

The government has paid bounties to Eastern whale-hunters, 
to build up commerce ; but she prohibits, by duties, the importa- 
tion of all foreign goods, and thereby dispenses with merchant- 
men and destroys commerce. 

New England demands a premium upon everything she raises 
upon her stony soil and inhospitable clime, and demands a tax 
upon cotton, oil, and every other product, because they are the 
product of rebels. They secured the abrogation of the Cana- 
dian reciprocity treaty, to secure a trifling protection to a few 
half-starved Eastern farmers and lumber merchants, but which 
could not possibly affect the Western farmer, whose crop would 
be exhausted in the transportation, long before it could reach a 
point of competition with the same Canadian article, and our 
superior facilities defy competition on our own ground. 

Such is the stupidity of the Western people, that they are 
rearing monuments to perpetuate their own shame, and cele- 
brating anniversaries to commemorate their own subjugation. 
AVe were using our own armies to destroy our own markets. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 3(51 

When the husky voice of a mongrel fanaticism drove the 
Western States into an unnatural market, and forced an unnatu- 
ral alliance with New England, (bearing precisely the same rela- 
tion to her haughty ally, that poor Jim Boswell bore to Dr. 
Johnson,) they seem flattered by very much the same style of 
adulation employed by the great lexicographer to his factotum. 
History illustrates no such voluntary debasement as that of 
the Western people ; with such a population, resources, produc- 
tions and dependencies, surrendered without hesitation, to mas- 
ters so exacting and remote from them. This condition of things 
will continue wdiilst the people remain ignorant of their wants, 
powers, duties, and obligation to themselves and society. Tiieir 
representatives will grow rich in the sale of the liberties of their 
constituencies, and revel in wealth in their presence. 

Such is the condition of the brewing sectional strife between 
the great divisions of the country. 

Time moves slowly along, and at its heels drags on the ap- 
jiointed events of fate, and the purposes of destiny are slo^^dy 
filling up their measure. Money is becoming all the time a little 
scarcer. Houses are scarce, and nobody builds, because their 
money is safely locked up in bonds ; and bonds pay better, and 
cost less in taxation, than anything else. It will not justify the 
farmer to break prairie, fence fields, plant orchards, or engage in 
any other speculation or enterprize. All these things are taxed 
beyond endurance; but bonds are not taxed and not taxable. 
They draw a higher interest, paid by a deluded people, on long 
time, than a second-rate merchant can afford to pay on a sixty 
day's note in a country bank, and retain his credit. But this 
will be the hardest year of taxation ever known in the Western 
States, and the most difficult year in which to pay taxes. The 
war has literally swept from the plantation, horses, mules, cattle, 
swine, and everything but sheep, which have taken the place of 
the cotton-boll. Horses were slaughtered in battle, or worn out 
on the march ; cattle were wantonly shot doMui in large herds, 
and left to perish, whilst the primest of the land were slaugh- 
tered for beef; and then the hog cholera swept like an Egyptian 
plague from farm to farm, sometimes leaving scarcely the seed of 
the race in its train. 



362 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

The farmers are nothing like so rich this year as they were 
last, and will be much jioorer next. Emigration from the valley 
to the mountains has commenced, through the scarcity of money ; 
and many who returned from the war with money in their poclv- 
ets, are now without a dime, entering on the struggle for life, in 
competition Avith the negro as a day laborer; and the men whose 
battles they fought, employ the negro in jireference to the poor 
white man, who has served their purpose. The people of the 
country, like the Secretary of tlie Treasury, seem oblivious of 
their financial condition. They talk like people who are out of 
debt; like a rich lunatic Avho had burned up his fine farms, 
torn out his dams, shot down his horses, cattle, sheep and hogs, 
destroyed his mills, dismissed his intelligent clerks and business 
men, and invited his laboring hands to a general drunken spree, 
as the status of their future condition ; and after the universal 
destruction of his productive power for which he has paid enor- 
mous sums, he goes to work to speculate upon his future pros- 
pects ; of the yield of farms without hands, laid waste ; the 
manufactory of mills lying in ashes; dams levelled with the 
waters; of the increase of his dead horses, cattle, sheep and 
hogs, and issues a proclamation to his drunken rabble, that the 
next will exceed all former crops ; and jubilant over his financial 
condition and the prowess of his rapscal Icons and slubberdegul- 
lions, and proud of the attractive beauty of his yahoos, threatens 
to extend this plantation style of improvement. 

This is the condition of the whole Southern States. In the 
Western, buggies in the summer, and sleighs in the winter, with 
the music of their jingling bells, have not so much custom and 
go out at lower prices than formerly. 

The Western soldiers who fought with a desperation rarely wit- 
nessed on the field, and marched with an endurance rarely rival- 
led in the movement of armies, are now poor, many of them 
maimed and broken down ; none of them rich. Of the faithful 
men who volunteered through devotion to the cause in which 
they fought, the suffering is very great and the money Avhich 
ought to be devoted to the comforts, is thrown away in tariffs 
upon the necessaries of life, and the home of the active warrior 
is only less desolate than those whose domicil he left in ashes. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAH. 363 

Nearly all of the bounty money has been expended. Blue 
coats on the village squares are becoming scarcer, loafers more 
abundant, crime on the increase, grain selling lower, taxes in- 
creasing, money becoming scarcer, and complaint becoming gen- 
eral, with only this unfortunate difficulty, that the seat of the 
disease has not been reached. 

THE CONDITION OF THE WESTEEN STATES. 

There is much ado about railroads, monopolies, and building 
railroads, and cutting canals, and uniting oceans by common 
channels, &c,, as a remedy for the evils of expensive transporta- 
tion. The people are in a condition of perturbation. The only 
good that may come of this is the attention which it may arouse 
and the enquiry which it may elicit, and ultimately lead to a sus- 
picion, at least, of the true consequences of the troubles of which 
they complain. They complain of the railroad monopolies. 
This is unfair. The freights and passage are not unusually or un- 
necessarily high, as compared with everything else. Their stamp 
duties are imposed by the act of the General Government. Their 
income taxes, with the other legal obstructions to free commerce, 
make high prices a necessity to their very existence. The evil is 
beyond that, and will be recurred to again. The evil is in this 
fact, that the country owes an incalculably oppressive debt that 
will hold in bonds the industrial energies in all time to come. 
Every part of the whole body politic will groan under it ; the 
leo-s will grow weary and tremble in their effort to stand alone. 
The back will grow weak, the head dizzy, and the stomach lose 
its digestion, until the whole paralyzed frame lies prostrate and 
dead. Only the babbling tongue of loyalty, uiiconscious of the 
evils upon us, will cry for new taxation. 

The West has either to yield to these impositions and make a 
cowardly transmission of the burdens to her children, or at once 
to prepare to throw oif the yoke, and emancipate herself and her 
country together. 

Let AVestern men every where unite upon this general basis. 

1. Equality of Labor and its Products. 

2. That no one Species of Industry shall be sup- 
ported AT THE Expense of Another. 



364 CEIMES OP THE CIVIL WAE. 

3. Reciprocity treaties as the basis of commerce among civil- 
ized nations. 

4. The abolition of the funding system, with its standing ar- 
mies, banks, protective tariffs, and gambling corporations, based 
upon visionary capital. 

5. The restoration of the Constitution of the United States, as 
a perpetual bond of union among all the States, and a wall of 
fire, with its leaping flames to environ the liberties of the people. 

People op the West op all names, emancipate yourselves 
from the leagues, societies and combinations of party, which are 
always corrupt and corrupting ; elevate your souls to the contem- 
plation of those great truths which were sealed by the blood of 
our fathers, of which our material interests were the most endur- 
ing testimonial. Cast your eye forward to the future dwelling 
place of our children, together in a great valley, with all of the 
diversities of wealth, and sources of happiness, grandeur of em- 
pire and beauty of scenery, which adorned the primeval habita- 
tions of our first parents. Let the sacred ashes of our fathers, 
preserved undisturbed in the beautiful cemeteries adorned by our 
children, remind us of the glories of the past, and the growth, 
prosperity and power of our posterity, stimulate us to firmly de- 
mand and unflinchingly maintain our equal rights of commerce, 
agriculture, representation and constitutional government. 

This, honest men will not deny us, and no power of villainy 
can extort by violence. 

AYe appeal to the young men of the Mississippi Valley to join 
us in the movement to save us from the bondage of the capital- 
ists. Tlie young men of this great valley, of both armies, in- 
spired by youthful fire and love of country, as they understood 
it, went to war with each other. Now the war is over. The 
Mississippi Valley, once the garden of the world, sits in desola- 
tion, while Eastern capital, enriched by your mutual blood, is 
absorbing your labor. In Heaven's beneficent name, let all the 
past be forgotten, and call back the precious recollection that Ave 
are brethren ; forget not that the crystal waters of Lake Pepin, 
wdiich reflect the images of the lovely daughters of the upper 
Mississippi, sweep on their majestic course, and cast back the 
shadows of the children of the Gulf, that we are all one. Upon 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 3G5 

tills one subject we can all agree ; " Eadical/' " Rebel," Conser- 
vative, Democrat, — that Saint Louis must not be tributary to 
Boston ; that Chicago must no longer be the mere tenant of 
Eastern capitalists ; that we, who hold the granary of the world 
in our hands, need not go begging for bread. Then let us or- 
ganize, without regard to subjects of discord, and unite to rid us 
of this debasing servitude. 



3(5(5 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



book: ipoxjie^ts:. 



CHAPTER I. 

Mr. Jefferson's Objections to National Banks. 

1. To form the subscribers into a corporation. 

2. To enable them in their corporate capacities, to receive 
grants of land, and so far, is against the laws of mortmain. 

[Note. — Though the Constitution controls the laws of mort- 
main, so far as to permit Congress itself to hold lands for certain 
purposes, yet not so far as to permit them to communicate a sim- 
ilar right to other corporate bodies.] 

3. To make alien subscribers capable of holding lands, so far, 
is against the laws of alienage. 

4. To transmit these lands, on the death of a proprietor, to 
a certain line of successors, and so far, changes the course of 
descent. 

5. To put the lands out of the reach of forfeiture or escheat, 
and so far, is against the laws of forfeiture and escheat. 

6. To transmit personal chatties to successors in a certain line, 
and so far, is against the laws of distribution. 

7. To give them the sole and exclusive right of banking, 
under the national authority, and so far, is against the laws of 
monopoly. 

8. To communicate to them a power to make laws, paramount 
to the laws of the States, for so they must be construed ; to pro- 
tect the institution from the control of tlie State Legislatures, and 
so, probably, they will be construed. I consider the foundation 
of the Constitution as laid on this ground ; that all powers not 
delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohib- 
ited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, or to the 
people. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 367 

ILllth Amendment. — To take a single step beyond the bounda- 
ries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to 
take possession of a boundless field of power ; no longer suscep- 
tible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank and the 
powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been dele- 
gated to the United States by the Constitution. 

They are not among the enumerated j)owers, for these are : — 

1. A power to lay taxes for. the purpose of paying the debts 
of the United States, but no debt is paid by this bill nor any tax 
laid. Were it a bill to raise money, its organization in the Senate 
would condemn it by the Constitution. 

2. To borrow money ; but this bill neither borrows money, 
nor insures the borrowing of it. The proprietors of th^ bank 
will be just as free as any other money-holders to lend, or not to 
lend their money to the public. The operation proposed in the 
bill, first, to lend them two millions and then borrow them back 
again, cannot change the nature of the latter act, which will still 
be a payment and not a loan, — call it by what name you please. 

3. To regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the 
States, and with the Indian tribes. 

To erect a bank and regulate commerce, are very different acts. 
He who erects a bank, creates a subject of commerce in its bills ; 
so does he who makes a bushel of wheat, or digs a dollar out of 
the mines. Yet neither of these persons regulate commerce 
thereby. 

To make a thing which may be bought and sold, is not to pre- 
scribe regulations for buying and selling. Besides, if this Avere 
an exercise of the power of regulating commerce, it would be 
void, as extending as much to the internal commerce of every 
State as to its external. 

For the power given to the Congress by the Constitution does 
not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State ; 
that is to say, of the commerce between citizen and citizen, which 
remains exclusively with its own legislature : but to its external 
commerce only, that is to say, its commerce with another State, 
or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes. Accordingly, 
the bill does not propose the measure as a regulation of trade, 
but as productive of considerable advantage to trade. Still less 



368 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

are these powers covered by any other of the special enumer- 
ations. 

II. Nor are they within either of the general phrases, which 
are the two following : — 

1. To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the 
United States ; that is to say, to lay taxes ibr the purpose of pro- 
viding for the general welfare. For the laying of taxes is the 
power, and the general welfare the purpose, for which the power 
is to be exercised. Congress is not to lay taxes ad Ubitium, for 
any purpose they please, but only to pay the debts or provide for 
the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do 
anything they please, to provide for the general well, but only to 
lay taxes for that purpose. To consider tlie latter phrase, not as 
a describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and 
independent power to do any act they jjlease, which might be for 
the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and sub- 
sequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would 
reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase. 

That of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever 
would be for the good of the United States, and as they would 
be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power 
to do whatever evil they pleased. It is an established rule of 
construction, where a phrase will bear either of two meanings, 
to give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts 
of the instrument, and not that which will render all the others 
useless. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be 
given them. 

It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enume- 
rated powers ; and those without which as means these powers, 
could not be carried into effect. It is known that the very power 
now proposed as a means, was rejected as an end by the conven- 
tion which formed the Constitution. A proposition was made to 
them, to authorize Congress to open canals, and an amendatory 
one to empower them to incorporate. But the whole was reject- 
ed, and one of the reasons of the rejection urged in debate, was, 
that they then would have a power to erect a bank, which would 
render the greater cities, where there were prejudices and jeal- 
ousies upon that subject, adverse to the reception of the Consti- 
tution. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 369 

2. The second general plirase is, to make all laws necessary 
and proper, for carrying into execution the enumerated powers. 

But they can all be carried into execution witliout a bank. A 
bank, therefore, is not necessary, and consequently, not authorized 
by this phrase. 

It has been much urged that a bank will give great facility or 
convenience in the collection of taxes. Suppose this were true; 
yet the Constitution allows only the means which are necessary, 
not those which are merely convenient for effecting the enume- 
rated powers ; if such a latitude of construction be allowed to 
this phrase, as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go 
every one, for there is no one which ingenuity may not torture 
into a convenience, in some way or other, to some one of so long 
a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the dele- 
gated powers and reduce the whole to one phrase, as before ob- 
served. 

Therefore it was, that the Constitution restrained them to the 
necessary means ; that is to say, to those means, without which, 
the grant of the power would be nugatory. * * * * 

Perhaps bank bills may be a more convenient vehicle than 
Treasury orders, but a little difference in the degree of conve- 
nience cannot constitute the necessity, which the Constitution 
makes the ground for assuming any non-enumerated power. * * 

Can it be thought that the Constitution intended that for a 
shade or two of convenience, more or less, Congress should be 
authorized to break down the most ancient and fundamental laws 
of the several States, such as those against mortmain, the laws 
against alienage, the rules of descent, the acts of distribution, 
the laws of escheat and forfeiture, and the laws of monopoly ? 

Nothing but a necessity, invincible by any other means, can 
justify such a prostration of laws, which constitute the pillars 
of our whole system of jurisprudence. AVill Congress be too 
straight-laced to carry the Constitution into honest effect, unless 
they may pass over the foundation laws of the State Government 
for the slightest convenience to theirs ? 

The negative of the President, is the shield provided by the 
Constitution to protect against the invasions of the legislature. 

1. The rights of the Executive. 
24 



370 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

2. Of the judiciary. 

3. Of the States and State Legislatures. 

The present is the case of a right, remaining exclusively with 
the States, and is consequently one of those intended by the Con- 
stitution, to be placed under his protection. 

It must be added, however/ that unless the President's mind 
on a view of every thing, which is urged for or against this bill, 
is tolerably clear, that it is unauthorized by the Constitution, if 
the j9ro and the con hang so even as to balance this judgment, 
a just respect for the wisdom of the legislature, would natu- 
rally desire the balance in favor of their opinion. It is chiefly 
for cases where they are clearly misled by error, ambition, or in- 
terest, that the Constitution has placed a check in the negative 
of the President. 

FeVy 15, 1791. Thos. Jeffeeson. 

MR. clay's opinion. 

The Constitution makes gold and silver the only legal tender 
in payment of debt. 

The word pay, means to return something, for something else 
of equal value. 

A promissory note may be an equivalent in expectancy, but a 
promise to pay is not payment, whether made by individual or 
the government. 

Governments may, as heretofore, use a diversity of substances 
for money; leather, iron, tobacco, gold and silver; but it must 
be something more than a promise to pay. 

To carry out the Constitution, Congress has the power " to coin 
money." Upon this single and restricted power, the foundations 
of our agriculture, commerce, manufactures and every other in- 
terest was laid. 

A paper currency had ruined a generation of the noblest of 
our race. Continental money, yet unredeemed, was lying in the 
drawers of the rich and the poor, who had been made poor by its 
insolvency. 

The paper subterfuge had been a failure everywhere. It had 
made no promise which it had not broken a thousand times else- 
where. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 371 

They wisely made their money of the precious metals, and 
staniijed it Avitli a fixed value. A departure from this standard 
by the employment of banks as the disbursing agent of the gov- 
ernment, had paralyzed its energy in universal bankruptcy. 

The Avhole subject was elaborately presented in his most forci- 
ble style, by ]\Ir. Clay, who had served in Congress with the 
great men of the revolution, and led for a full generation, the 
ablest of all our statesmen in the most brilliant iiistory of the 
American Congress. 



ME. CLAYS VIEWS OP THE COXSTITUTIONALTTY OF A NA- 
TIONAL BANK, IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED 
STATES, IN 1811. 

" The vagrant power to erect a bank, after having wandered 
through the avhole Constitution in quest of some congenial spot 
to fasten upon, has been, at length, located by the gentleman from 
Georgia, on that provision which authorizes Congress to lay and 
collect taxes. In 1791, the power is referred to one part of the 
instrument; in 1811, to another. Sometimes it is alleged to be 
deducible from the power to regulate commerce. Hard pressed 
here, it appears and shows itself under the grant to coin money. 
What is the nature of this government ? It is emphatically 
federal, vested with an aggregate of specified powers for general 
purposes, conceded by existing sovereignties, who have them- 
selves retained what is not so conceded. It is said there are cases 
in wdiich it must act on implied powers. This is not contro- 
verted, but the implication must be necessary, and obviously flow 
from the enumerated powers with which it is allied. The power 
to charter companies is not specified in the grant, and I contend 
is of a nature not transferable by mere implication. In the ex- 
ercise of this gigantic power, we have seen an East India Com- 
pany erected, which has carried dismay, desolation and death, 

throughout one of the largest portions of the habitable world, 

a company which is in itself a sovereignty; which has subvert- 
ed empires, and set up new dynasties, and has not only made 
war, but ^var against its legitimate sovereign ! Under the in- 
fluence of this power, we have seen arise a South Sea Company, 



372 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

and a Mississippi Company, that distracted and convulsed all 
Europe, and menaced a total overthrow of all credit and confi- 
dence, and to produce universal bankruptcy. Is it to be imagin- 
ed that a power so vast would have been left by the Constitution,, 
to doubtful inference ? It has been alleged that there are many- 
instances in the Constitution, where powers, in their nature in- 
cidental, and which would necessarily have been vested along 
with the principal, are, nevertheless, expressly enumerated ; and 
the power to make rules and regulations for the government of 
the land and naval forces, which, it is said, is incidental to the 
power to raise armies, and provide a navy, is given as an exam- 
ple. What does this prove ? How extremely cautious the Con- 
vention were to leave as little as possible to implications. In all 
cases where incidental powers are acted upon, the principal and 
incidental ought to be congenial with each other, and partake of 
a common nature. The iucidental power ought to be strictly 
subordinate and limited to the end proposed to be attained by 
the specific power. In other words, under the name of accom- 
plishing one object, which is specified, the power implied ought 
not to be made to embrace other objects, which are not specified 
in the Constitution. If, then, as it is contended, you could es- 
tablish a bank to collect and distribute the revenue, it ought to 
be expressly restricted to the purpose of such collection and dis- 
tribution. 

It is mockery, worse than usurpation, to establish it for a law- 
ful object, which is not lawful. In deducing the power to create 
corporations, such as I have described it, from the power to lay 
and collect taxes, the relation and condition of principal and in- 
cident, are prostrated and destroyed. The accessory is exalted 
above the principal. As well it might be said that the great lu- 
minary of day is accessory, a satellite to the humblest star that 
twinkles forth its feeble light in the firmament of heaven. Look 
at it in another aspect. Seven-tenths of its capital are in the 
hands of foreigners, chiefly English subjects. We are possibly 
on the eve of a rupture with that nation. Should such an event 
occur, do you apprehend that the English premier would expe- 
rience any difficulty in obtaining the entire control of this insti- 
tution? Republics, above all other governments, ought most 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 373 

seriously to guard against foreign influence. All history proves 
that the internal dissensions excited by foreign intrigue, have 
produced the downfall of almost every free government that has 
hitherto existed ; and yet gentlemen contend that we are benefit- 
ed by the possession of this foreign capital." 

Prophecy never foretold human fortunes better. It is the 
most jjainful of all our present evils, that Europe holds a large 
amount of American bonds, and has loaned them to Americans, 
as the basis of bank stock. 

These European bondholders are largely in the interest of both 
the political parties and at all the nominating boards. The agents 
of European capital will freely lavish their money, and corrupt 
every sentiment of American democracy and republicanism to 
control American politics. 

In any event of foreign complication, the interests of capital 
will be subsidized by European Powers and agencies. 

These banking institutions are under a most alarming Euro- 
jDcan espionage, and all legislation is accessible to this influence. 

England can preserve Ireland through the bond stock of her 
bankers. 

Austria hold her grasp tighter on Hungary, through her cap- 
ital. Bismarck will be stronger through this system of mon- 
opoly. 

The whole change in our manners and morals to that of des- 
potism, had its origin in the funding system. 

Our affinity for Russia against Poland, was the legitimate off- 
spring of a funding system which made serfs of laborers, robbed 
one-half of the country of its representation, and elevated bar- 
barians to the office and status of citizens. 



374 CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER II. 

National Banks Unnecessary. 

Confidence is the foundation of the banking sys- 
tem. 

This is not the mere calculating logic of the usurer, based upon 
facts, figures, and responsible securities. The confidence of the 
public credits, for I shall call him such, is of a much higher and 
more sublimated character. He must believe that the man who 
owes him three dollars, with first one dollar to pay it, makes his 
debt abundantly secure. 

That John Law redeemed eighty dollars of his Mississippi 
stocks at par, with one dollar in gold, or that our immense cir- 
culation of paper money may be readily redeemed in gold and 
silver coin. 

He must be willing to imperil the wages of his labor, the 
price of his property, the sanctity of his homestead, the profits 
of his business and support of his family, in promises to pay 
from a system which has regularly, every decade, bankrupted 
itself, depreciated its entire value and scattered distress in every 
avenue of business and trade, throughout the whole range of its 
circulation. 

He must believe that a faithful promise to pay, which never 
has been and never can be jxiid, except in the exchange of one 
false promise, for many, each alike, beyond the reach of redemp- 
tion. Both Law and Robespierre declared that their paper sys- 
tem w^ould be successful, if the people would give it their un- 
limited confidence, which, in other words, means that the bank 
notes are unquestionably solvent if there is never any demand 
for payment, which holds equally good of all other obligations, 
and which plan, if duly followed out, would ensure the solvency 
of all obligations whatever. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 375 

The destruction of the old United States bank, had made the 
name of Andrew Jackson ilhistrious among his political ad- 
mirers, as a statesman, as it had been before immortal as a hero. 
His fame was a guarantee to the people of the United States, 
that a system of speculative banking should never be revived 
under the auspices of the government. 

The existence of such a monstrous fraud upon the currency, 
credit, and industry of the country, as the new banking system, 
could have found no standing-place but for these bonds, which 
were made for that purpose. 

The paper issued by these banks, is the first certain step to- 
ward repudiation. It is not a legal tender, and is morever, sub- 
ject to all of the fluctuations incident to any other mere paper 
currency. 

It is not and cannot be adequately secured' against deprecia- 
tion. It is, in fact, a form of repudiation which in every ten 
years changes bf the misfortune of trade, the full half of the 
capital of the country, from the hands of the producer and legiti- 
mate retainer, to the hands of the speculator, stock gamblers, and 
adventurers. 

Xo system of paper money can be solvent, unless it be a cur- 
rency fairly based upon the business credit of a good man or 
corporation, firmly secured by indestructible property ; but this 
can never be done, for such a currency should be based upon the 
positive capital, and not the indebtedness of the government. 

There can be neither argument or apology successfully made 
for the issue of money, either by or under the auspices of the 
government, against the direct and unequivocal prohibition of 
the Constitution. The entire absence of a circulating medium 
for the transaction of business, may be plead as a necessity ; but 
this could never occur in a fair administration of government, con- 
trolled by constitutional laws. Such gold-commanding staples, 
as cotton, tobacco, hemp, sugar, rice, and gold mines — which 
rival the wealth of Ophir and pour a steady stream of the pre- 
cious metals into the lap of the public treasury — administered by 
statesmen, with integrity, could command the gold of the world. 
Necessity, the profligate prostitute, whose shameless face is not 
abashed to hold up her hideous, nameless, mongrel offspring, as 



376 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

the proper and legitimate children of chance, stands ready to 
plead for banking, just as she pleads for murder by military 
commission, robbery by arbitrary taxation, and every other form 
of crime convenient or subservient for the purposes of power. 

Governments, like individuals, when unable to pay her debts, 
may give evidences of indebtedness, and ours may, with much 
more show of candor than of constitutional authority, issue treas- 
ury notes as legal tender. But for the establishment of banks, 
there can be neither constitutional authority or sound argument. 
Bankruptcy, the certain prelude of repudiation, must follow in- 
evitably. 

The revolutionary audacity which hesitates at no wrong, and 
scruples at no adventure, will scarcely assume to make this 
worthless bank paper a legal tender without a change of the 
Constitution. 

It is incomprehensible, that in the infinite amendments offer- 
ed to the Constitution, that this one has not been proposed to 
force the creditor to acce23t " national bank " notes as a legal 
tender in payment of debts, and compel him to jmy his taxes in 
gold and silver, just as treasury notes were forced upon the peo- 
ple as a legal tender, yet were not received in payment of duties, 
which was perhaps the only reason why they should be issued 
by the general government, as money at all, in the i)rosecution of 
the commercial business of the country. 

This national bank currency was substituted for the treasury 
notes, which were made a legal tender by Congressional legisla- 
tion, only to make way for the issue of bonds. 

At every point of this tangled jungle of controversy, new 
questions arise, which are best answered as they come legiti- 
mately up. 

1. The banks were not necessary as banks of issue, to give to the 
people, a circulating medium, for these two obvious reasons : 

First. These bank notes were not and could not be made a 
legal tender in the payment of debts, under the most liberal or 
even extravagant interpretation of the Constitution, and, as such, 
added nothing to the circulating medium, nor contributed in any 
manner whatever, to the wealth, business, or industry of the 
country. 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAE. 377 

Second. The " national bank " notes supplanted and drove 
from circulation the treasury notes which, by law, were made 
legal tender in the payment of debts ; and whether constitutional 
or not, met the existing wants of the people, as accepted by them 
in the transaction of business, and to which they had accommo- 
dated themselves. 

Third, The national banks are a nuisance in their character 
as banks of issue, from the two foregoing considerations; since every 
national bank note, if redeemed at all, must be redeemed in treas- 
ury notes, denominated a legal tender. Then why not give to 
the people the treasury notes as a valid legal tender, as a circu- 
lating medium, directly from the United States treasury, instead 
of indirectly through bonds, corporations, usurers, extortioners, 
and banks, as an invalid currency, which is not a legal tender. 



378 CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER III. 

No Banking System can be made Secure. 

The people have no security in any system op Bank 
Paper; have lost immense amounts by the Banking 
System, which stand as an irresistible argument 
against the system itself. 

Among all of the illustrious men who have filled the office of 
Secretary of the Treasury, there was scarcely the superior of Judge 
Woodbury, who, whether as Governor, Senator, Secretary or Judge, 
was alike of integrity, above suspicion, and intellect profound 
and broad, who administered the affairs of the Treasury in the 
most critical period of our financial history, with an ability never 
excelled. The judgment of such a man transmitted as a treas- 
ure to posterity, is a landmark of science. In times like these, 
such well-matured opinions ought to guide our deliberations. 
To this great statesman we are indebted for the following table 
of the aggregate losses since 1798, to the people, through the 
existence of banks, and the use of bank paper : 

1. Losses through banks that have failed since 

1798 on their capital, circulation and deposits $108,000,000 

2. Losses by depreciation on bank notes through 
suspension of specie payments by banks $ 95,000,000 

3. Losses by destruction of bank notes by ac- 
cident 7,121,332 

4. The losses through counterfeit notes, from 
1790 to 1841, over and above what would have 

been on coin $ 112,220,400 

5. Amount of interest paid to banks for the 

use of banking institutions $1400,000,000 

6. Losses by fluctuations from bank currency, 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 379 

affecting prices of living;, sacrifices of property at 

slieriflV sales, from 1*790 up to 18G0 $ 300,000,000 

Total $2,022,341,332 

The process of the losses are very easily illustrated. Sup- 
pose the currency of the United States amounts to $700,000,000 
at any given time; the currency is quoted at 150; within one 
month it falls in quotation to 125, of one-sixth of the whole 
amount of currency, $116,606,666: somebody loses this, but 
this is true of the fluctuation on shorter and smaller amounts. 
In the course of the year they amount to full one hundred per cent., 
counting the advances and declines of the market. Leaving all 
of this entirely out of the account, which is so transparent, the 
amount of losses duly computed foot up the enormous sum 

of $1927,341,732 

Amount lost by legal tender, national banks and 

bonds during the last five years $1999,000,000 

The enormous sum of. $3,926,341,732 

There are several other matters incidental in the history of 
the American banking system, among which may be named the 
fact that the amount of capital upon which issues are made, is 
never paid in, and very often not ten per cent, of the whole 
amount is ever connected with the bank. 

The process is a very simple one. The borrower and the 
lender exchanges notes ; the borrower pays a heavy per cent, to 
the bank for loaning his security, and the banker actually lives 
upon the interest of what he owes, and finally, when pay-day 
comes, the bank note must be redeemed by the money of the 
borrower, who pays the banker's debts, and the banker draws 
the interest. The banker is a middle-man, authorized by law to 
rob the public. Tlie national bank notes have no credit which 
the government docs not bestow upon them. From January, 
1866, to January, 1867, the national banks drew from., the Treas- 
ury, interest on $300,000,000, amounting to $18,000,000; in 
1868 the banks will get interest on that $18,000,000, $1,080,000, 
in addition to the $18,000,000, $19,080,000, making in all 
$37,080,000. 



380 CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAK. 

In 1869, the banks will draw their interest on the $300,000,- 
000 — $18,000,000, also on the $37,080,000 — $2,224,800 ; total, 
$57,309,800. In 1870, on the $300,000,000, $18,000,000, and 
on $37,080,000, making a total of $78,743,088 — carried onto 
the year 1906, the interest, with its compoundings, will amount 
to the enormous sum of $2,739,000,000. But to this must be 
added the interest compounded in the form of discount in bank 
notes. To the people the sum is incalculable, and would bank- 
rupt any people under heavens, and reduces the question to one 
of time ; simply when the explosion must come. 

The expedient of a national bank is never a good one. Judge 
Woodbury says : " It is equally vain to expect relief from a na- 
tional bank of any Jcind. Aside from its unconstitutionality and 
dangers to j^ublio liberty, I will merely say as to the constitutional 
question, that the States rights man, or democrat, of 1798, icho 
can swallow this neio fiscal bank as constitutional, could swallow 
both Jonah and the whale, as the ichale did Jonah alone" This 
was said of a bank merely. What possible argument could 
statesmen oifer in apology for such a costly infernal machine as 
that which now " grinds the faces of the ])oor " under the name 
of " National Bank " ? The history of the whole transaction is 
one of incredibility. 

Under this system Congress issued Treasury notes, and declared 
them a legal tender. The people had conformed their business 
to this condition of things. Under the independent Treasury 
system, the Congress issued Treasury notes, payable on demand 
in other notes, or pledged to receive them in payment of postage, 
duties, etc., and other of these notes it put on the j^ublic at com- 
pound interest. 

These notes would have been a failure in the beginning, but 
for the application of such coercive legislation as was used by 
John Law and the Duke of Orleans, to sustain the Mississippi 
bubble, and brought by Robespierre and Mirabeau to give cur- 
rency to the assignats and mandats. The first of these expe- 
dients was to declare these Treasury notes a legal tender in 
the payment of debts Avhich had been contracted in gold and 
silver, though they were at a discount of sixty per cent. For 
this there was no law. There could be no law for such purpose. 



I 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 381 

But this difficulty was readily disposed of. Martial law was de- 
clared. The property of the country was under military rule, 
at the mercy of any upstart military official. Wherever the 
army might be brought to oppress the people, those who had 
property found it best to surrender it without cavil. Slungshots, 
bludgeons, were the only arguments used by these gentlemen in 
their determination of cases. In the courts he could find no 
redress for grievances ; they, too, were under martial law. 
Every judicial officer of character was harassed at every point, 
if known to be in opposition to the party in power. The best 
men of the bench were imprisoned ; the others willingly yielded 
to the pressure, and the government was careful not to raise the 
question of the legality of the paper money, and the opposition 
dared not. Although the issue of this currency as a legal tender 
was a stupendous fraud, which wrought great injustice upon its 
victims, yet the people framed their contracts, adjusted their 
business, and arranged their affiiirs, in view of the necessity of 
receiving these notes in payment of debts and fulfilment of con- 
tracts. They learned to accommodate the price of their grain, 
the wages of labor, the value of merchandise, and the business 
of the country, to the new and sorrowful condition of things 
which was now upon us. In doing this the loss of debts, the 
sacrifice of business, the depreciation of property, and all the 
concomitants of a change of currency, were endured by the peoj)le, 
especially the laboring masses. Congress had no power to issue 
notes as money. The power of Congress is specific, and limited 
in these words : " To coin money, and regulate the value there- 
of, and of foreign coin, and fix the standards of weight and 
measiu-es, to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the 
securities and coin of the United States." 

" No State shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make 
anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, 
in defiance of this clear provision of the Constitution. This 
question is so clear, and is stated so explicitly, that it defies the 
possibility of argument to add to it conclusions. In regard to 
Treasury notes for the temporary purposes of meeting the cur- 
rent wants and expenses of the government, but not as a legal 
tender, Albert Gallatin says : " Used as soberly as they have 



382 CHIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

been of late years by the Treasury department, and provided 
tliey are kept at j^ar, they are the most convenient mode of sup- 
plying a temporary deficiency in revenue, as well as the most 
convenient substitute for currency in the payment of debts." 
Keeping these notes at par is not only the measure of the capa- 
city of a nation to sustain her credit, but it is the only just and 
fair criterion by which a nation may determine the point at 
which her debt must cease to accumulate, to preserve her from 
excessive taxation. Of the debt, Gallatin says : " A public 
debt was always an evil to be avoided whenever practicable ; 
hardly ever justifiable, except in time of war. It has a tenden- 
cy, perhaps more than any other cause, to concentrate the national 
wealth into the hands of a small number of individuals, and it 
feeds the drones of society." George Washington did not hesi- 
tate to denounce the bondholders of the Revolution as "idlers, 

USURERS and EXTORTIOiS'ERS." 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 383 



CHAPTER ly. 

The First Great Crime of the Chase Banking System. 

The National Banks are a glaring fraud, to which 
the Government has made itself a criminal party in op- 
pressing THE People. 

First. — The Bondholders, who are the Bankers, are secured 
in the payment of their bonds, in legal tender, to the full amount 
of their face. 

In the second place, the note-holders have no adequate secu- 
rity for the redemption of the notes, or any reliable guaranty 
against depreciation. 

The Banking system as now organized, was an unnecessary ob- 
struction to the circulation of paper money, an oppressive rob- 
bery of the people by the Government, in conspiracy with spec- 
ulators. 

The crime of the system has been threefold. First, in issu- 
ing any treasury notes at all, under the general system of coer- 
cion adoi)ted as the theory of the Government by their own in- 
terpretation of the Constitution. 

If they had the right to coerce a State by physical force, and 
the right to coerce soldiers by conscription, to be employed in the 
coercion of a State, then, inasmuch as the laws and institutions 
of a State, and the life of a human being, are of greater value 
than their money, they had the right to enforce loans from the 
rich to carry on the war ; which would have preserved ^irices at 
their usual rates, except the rise in value consequent upon the 
increased demand upon articles of trade. But this they did not 
do ; and by their unwise course, the Government, in issuing fab- 
ulous sums of Treasury notes, not only oppressed the poor with 
high prices for all of the necessaries of life, but also increased 
the price of everything which was bought for its own use, which 
was oppressive upon both the Government and the poor people. 



384 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

But at the same time, this very inflation of money was of the 
greatest advantage to the rich, who, from the beginning to the 
ending of the war, contributed nothing of their w^ealth. As the 
currency depreciated, the rich put their gold into the market, 
which was rated worth as high as two hundred and eighty-nine 
cents in Treasury notes for each dollar of gold or silver. While 
the poor were bearing the burdens of the war, paying this heavy 
corresijonding advance on all that they ate and wore, furnishing 
their ablest-bodied men to make out the monthly butcher's bill 
of the horrible war. The rich were coining money from their 
idle capital hoarded in their drawers. 

This was the first crime premeditated ly committed, to prepare 
for the second crime. If this issue of treasury notes had not 
been made, specie payments need not have been suspended, and 
the losses of the war would have been confined to the army and 
their ravages, making due calculation for the loss of labor, di- 
version of capital, and destruction of commerce in the conflict 
of arms. 

Up to the commencement of the war, in 1861, for a period of 
a full quarter of a century, the Independent Treasury system 
had carried us safely along, embracing a period of war with a 
Foreign Power. 

It was a divorce between the Government and the Banking 
system, which drained the pockets of the people and distracted 
the business of the country. The Independent Treasury system 
made the business of the country independent in its relations to 
the financial managers, and threw speculators upon their own re- 
sources, for means to carry on their own vocation. 

The great objects of the Independent Treasury system was to 
place it out of the power of the combination of Capital, to coerce 
the Government, and make the legislation of the country inde- 
pendent. From a specie basis there never should have been a 
departure. In no departure from this, is there either profit or 
safety to the Government, or to the people. Until the return, 
no difference at what apparent cost it may be, all business is im- 
perilled. 

Under pretext of necessity and under cover of the Independ- 
ent Treasury system. Congress issued the Treasury notes and de- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 385 

clared them a legal tender, and after exceeding inconvenience, 
which is always incident to a change of the basis and character 
of a national currency, the people conformed their business to 
the altered condition of things. 

The second crime was committed under pretence of 
getting rid of the evils of the first. 

Just when the People had adjusted the trade of the country to 
the character of the currency, this new National Banking System 
was projected as a means of relief, and pretext for perpetual 
speculation and stock-gambling upon the industry of the laborer 
and economy of the frugal. 

This was done covertly, and by the most scandalous false pre- 
tense. 

The Secretary of the Treasury, in conspiracy with the Bank- 
ers of the country, created the public debt, which reached an 
amount incomprehensible and incalculable by figures, which 
makes the head dizzy in contemplation. The conspirators raised 
the hue and cry about the inflation of the currency, high prices 
and paper money, which should be contracted to a healthy 
amount and condition. 

The contraction of the currency was made even more remu- 
nerative than the inflation. 

The bankers, brokers, extortioners, usurers, and stock gam- 
blers, united in conspiracy with public officers in immediate prox- 
imity to the Treasury and revenue, to deprecate the profligate 
redundancy of the currency, and immediately went to work to 
buy up the outstanding notes which were drawing no interest 
and were serving the j^urposes of a circulating medium as well 
as any other mere paper currency could do which promised no 
coin as a basis of redemi^tion, and much better than any substi- 
tute which was not a legal tender in the payment of debts. 

But the redundancy in the currency was the ruinous evil com- 
plained of by the conspirators, and the only conceivable remedy 
was the contraction of its volume. 



25 



386 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Second Great Crime of Chase's Banking System. 
The issue op bonds was the second crime and the 

REMEDY proposed FOR THE EXPANSION. 

This was perpetrated by a series of crimes winch, step by step, 
paved the Avay for the second robbery of the people ; at the same 
time divesting them of a possibility of any remedy whatever. 

I. The primary movement was the adoption of the funding 
system and the issue of bonds as the only possible means of 
creating a permanent and varied aristocracy, without the know- 
ledge of the people, or the necessity of its incorporation in the 
Constitution of the United States; a measure for which the pub- 
lic mind was not yet prepared nor well in the course of prepara- 
tion. No special titles of nobility are tolerated. Any other 
wealth is evanescent, measured by success in business. 

Fortune or misfortune plays at her will, and whim, with the 
accumulations of industry, the grasp of av^arice, and over-reach- 
ing speculation. But this funding system will make an aristoc- 
racy permanent and offensive. It places labor at the disposal of 
idlers, and make serfs of all laborers, and reduces farmers to 
mere tenants at will. 

II. This aristocracy, created by the funding system, based upon 
an untaxed mortgage of the property and labor of the country, 
could readily ba made transmissible, to pass from sire to son. 
The extortioners and usurers, who hold their mortgage upon the 
labor of the present generation, will transmit their bonds to their 
children, to pass as a mortgage upon the children of the labor who 
now pay it, inheriting from their parents only the right to be 
taxed. 

This process was to be carried out and to be paid in paper 
money, until age had made the debt respectable and blotted out 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAPw. 387 

its shameful history; until arbitrary power has crushed out the 
spirit of free inquiry. 

This matter was carefully considered in laying the foundation 
for a perpetual aristocracy as its complete basis. 

In the United States, there was not ground-work, other than 
the funding system. 

There could not be a military aristocracy, under 
THE Federal system, for these reasons : First. There 
were too many military men in the country alike ambitious of 
distinction, and lustful of power to invest them with exclusive 
rule. 

Second. The jealousies so natural to military men, would lead 
to endless divisions in such an organization, and the original 
selections of military officers were too indiscriminate for such a 
purpose. 

Third. Money was required as the basis of commanding aris- 
tocracy. This the military of the country had not, and more 
than all, it was impossible to transmit an aristocracy of this kind, 
had it been possible — which it was not — to create it. 

There could not be a clerical aristocracy, as in 
Great Britain. Is^. There was no established Church and 
no established religion, no common faith, no common purposes 
of organization. 

2c?. The denominations were too numerous, and in all the ele- 
ments of their faith, too diverse, and in their organization, too 
jealous of rivalry, to make any common establishment at that 
time possible. 

3d. Like the military, they were without financial establish- 
ment and commanded no influence, except that which was given 
them by their wealthy congregations. 

The capitalists of the country were the only elements 
out of which to create a perpetual aristocracy, who could trans- 
mit their wealth and power together, as the Rothschilds in 
Europe. 

1. This could be done without exciting any other comment 
whatever, during their establishment and after it had been estab- 
lished. Funding, the old tliorough and exacting system of finan- 
cial slavery, was the method adopted to effect this purpose. 



388 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

2. This made the bondholders an aristocracy at once, without 
any intervening ceremonials. The ownership of the bonds had a 
profound meaning, which told more upon the material interests 
of the country than stars or garters. The issue of the bonds 
sealed the aristocracy and made it complete, and may be seen in 
the course of legislation, in every department of the govern- 
ment, in every part of the country. When a measure of legisla- 
tion is called up before Congress, the aristocracy is represented 
in their capital, but the people have no voice. 

When a tariff of duties is to be imposed, the manufacturers, 
with their attorneys, are heard before Congressional committees, 
who never grow poorer by their presence. But the poor con- 
sumers, who are as many thousands to one, are never heard ; 
they have no voice, no representative. 

When a question of currency is involved, the presidents of 
banks go as a caucus to inform the Congress what is demanded 
for the general good ; but the millions, whose food and raiment 
are dependent upon the circulating medium, are not even consult- 
ed," and have no voice raised in their behalf. 

This oligarchy of bondholders is worse even than the British 
aristocracy, which has been based upon noble blood or distin- 
guished services, which must preserve its self-respect to preserve 
its existence, and seek the security of their order in the good 
will of the people. 

The American aristocracy, the offspring of American corrup- 
tion, has a supreme will over the mercenary Congress that 
gave it being, wlio are but the supple tools of the various forms 
of the capital of the country. 

1. This aristocracy of wealth has not only its own inherent 
power, but it has the hired power of the corrupted clergy which 
it readily controls, as they are dependent upon public charity for 
a livelihood. For, of out of the twelve chosen by the Saviour, 
one denied, another betrayed, and all, except two, fled from their 
Master. Think not strange then, of corruptions now. 

2. It effectually controls the government, and with it the 
military ; and each new expense of hiring mercenaries, who are 
ready to fight for anybody or anything, which will pay them, 
is borne by the people in new taxes added to those that already 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 389 

weigh them Jown, of which, however, the bondholders are still 
exempt. 

In the creation of tlie funding system, the Congressmen were 
duly bribed and suborned, and are now nominated through the 
influence of capital, which avails itself of party frenzy; which 
is employed as motive power to impel the machinery of party 
corruption. Having the mercenary clergy under their control 
to inflame and mislead their flocks, they can then set the mili- 
tary on the people, who will gladly pay taxes or submit to any- 
thing to get rid of the insult and plunder of a soldiery, who will 
eventually be called in to aid the execution of the writs of the 
tax-gatherer. For it must not be forgotten that when incomes 
fail to yield revenue, as they soon must, then the land will be 
sold for taxes, and the bondholders will buy them up with in- 
terest on the bonds, at his own price. 

This second crime has given to the people of the United 
States, such a style of government, as leaves to tliera only the alter- 
native of slavery or repudiation. Already have these issues 
been made. 

II. The manner of the funding was a high-handed rob- 
bery of the people, even greater than the inflation of the currency 
in the first place. 

The volume of the currency had grown to such enormous pro- 
portions, that treasury notes had lost their entire relative value to 
gold and silver. Just then the bonds were placed upon the mar- 
ket, at an average cost ranging from thirty-five to fifty cents on 
the dollar. These bonds were bought up and paid for in legal 
tender notes. 

So that, by an edict of the conspirators, all of the available 
capital of the country was increased from two to three hundred 
per cent, in the hands of its owner, and, of necessity, all of the 
unavailable capital, or real estate and personal property, was on 
the same proportion actually diminished, as the bondsi^hus issued 
became a lien upon the other wealth of the country. 

It is not only a safe, but it is a liberal calculation to assume 
that, by the second crime, a gift of at least one-half of the whole 
funded debt of the United States was made to the capitalists, on 
the bonds issued, to be paid by the extreme poor and middling 



390 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

classes in stinting their daily bread, their ordinary wearing ap- 
parel and fuel. As the funding system and stock gambling has 
been examined elsewhere, we dismiss this subject merely with this 
statement. 

III. The peivileges of the funding system was a silent 
crime, the real enormity of which was not well understood at the 
time. It was the consummation of all the villainies incident 
to the establishment of a privileged order. These bondholders, 
by this act, were placed upon a level with the old French aris- 
tocracy who were not taxed, the very fact of which induced the 
French Revolution ; and to the credit of our fallen race be it 
recorded, that just this crime always has, and surely always will, 
excite rebellion anywhere. 

There was another manner of currency the cause for the issue 
of which, no national exposition has ever been given, nor, j)erhaps, 
ever will be. These were the compound interest legal tender 
notes which were issued in the earlier part of the Avar, when the 
bankers feared their ability to sufficiently involve the country, as 
to make it necessary to resort to the funding system. There was 
never known to be any distinction in the market, or current value 
among the rural populations, between the legal tender and the 
compound interest, nor any cause for their issue. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 391 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Third Great Crime of Chase's Banking System. 

The third crIxMe which consummated the wickedness 
OF National Banks, was perpetrated under the pre- 
tence THAT THE CURRENCY HAD BEEN TOO SUDDENLY CON- 
TRACTED. For they had no sooner bought up the bonds, than 
they discovered the country needed an inflated currency to pay 
an inflated public debt. 

Then, by an act of Congress, approved June 3, 1864, the 
bonds were made the basis, or rather the pretext, for a system of 
National Banking, with " all such incidental iwiocrs as shall be 
necessary to carry on the business of banking by discounting and 
negotiating jyromissory notes, drafts, bills of exchange, and other 
evidences of debt ; by receiving deposites ; by buying and selling 
exchange, coin and bullion ; by loaning money on personal secu- 
rity ; by obtaining, issuing and circulating notes according to the 
provisions of this act," &c. 

This system, like its predecessors, was a system of crimes 
which, were distributed regularly along the pathway of its exist- 
ence. 

I. The first crime or blunder of the new banking system was 
that it was allowed to issue money upon the faith or credit of 
the bonds, and receive at the same time a heavy interest upon 
both the bonds which they held, and the notes which they issued, 
at the very highest interest tolerated in the State in which the 
bank is located, and preparatory to the most extravagant and 
usurious rates. The Governors of several of the States, duly 
bribed, have recommended the entire repeal of the usury laws 
for the benefit of the banks. 

Congress authorized the issue of " National Bank Currency " 
to supply the place of the legal tender treasury note, which had 



392 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

been withdrawn to buy up these bonds. But, before one dollar 
of this national bank currency found its way into circulation, the 
borrower had to pay ten per cent, discount, which, duly com- 
pounded in a year, would be neariy fifteen per cent, per annum, 
which thus aggregates: 

Interest on Government Bonds 7 3-10 percent. 

Bank discount, exchange, &c., duly footed. ..15 " 

To pay for collecting and disbursing, all told ... 1 5 " 

37 3-10 per cent. 

On the whole circulation this is very nearly what every dollar 
costs the people before it finds its way into the borrower's pocket. 
The current value of the depreciated currency which was given 
for the bonds, was but little more than one-third of its face, 
making every bond issued in the shape of National Bank notes, 
cost about 90 per cent, per annum, after making due and fair 
allowance for all discrepancies exacted from the pockets of the 
people, to be paid to a bonded aristocracy — free from taxation 
— for the ostensible purpose of exchanging the notes of the 
Treasury of the United States, for notes on a corporation; but for 
the real purpose of building up a privileged class in the country, 
to control its property, business, elections and government. (If 
this calculation was made upon the 5-20 bonds, on which six 
per cent, interest in gold is paid, and upon which the bank cur- 
rency is based, the percentage would be greater ; but it is upon 
the 7-30s, they being issued to supply the place of the Treasury 
notes withdrawal to make Avay .for the bank notes.) Here it may 
be well to consider the evil which was suffered by the people in 
the change of paper money, to induce the creation of Banks. 

It must be apparent to all, that the issue of these bonds was 
unnecessary to the prosecution of the war. The very moment 
that the legal tender notes were declared money under the arbi- 
trary power of the Government, they were the very best thing 
in the shape of promises to pay that the people could have for 
currency, where there was no money. Then why issue bonds? 
But if any pretence is offered for the issue of the first bonds, to 
get money, or rather paper, or it may have been some gold, there 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL \VAE. 393 

^vas no possible financial necessity for the sale of l)onds after the 
Government commenced the issue of greenbacks. The reason 
is patent on its face. It was two-fold. They issued bonds free 
from taxation to give the rich men of the country an opportu- 
nity to invest their money in this manner, that the party might 
control and use their wealth to retain the political power of the 
country. 

There was another reason quite as transparent as this ; it was 
that national banking had been voted down, overthrown, was 
dead, — buried by Jackson, and could be raised over his immortal 
fame, only by force and fraud. But these men wanted national 
banking, with its fraud and corruption. This was the plan to 
revive it: issue bonds to draw interest to the bankers as the basis 
of the banks ; then let the banks issue their paper and draw in- 
terest on short loans, and compounded from the people who bor- 
rowed the notes from the bank to pay the interest. By this pro- 
cess the banker draws double interest — interest on his bonds 
which he bought, and interest on the bank notes which he issues, 
but it is all the same money. But on all this he is freed entirely 
from the taxation which is imposed on every other species of 
property. 

The folly was allowed of inflating a currency, just when it 
ouo-ht to have been contracted. 

Of creating high prices just when the price of every thnig 
should have been reduced. 

There was even, after this folly, one remedy which would have 
equalized the burden, and with some degree of fairness, distribu- 
ted the losses suffered by the people among those who had un- 
fairly gained by the inflation. 

Tins remedy M^as a simple as well as equitable one, which was 
to allow the Treasury notes without interest, to remain as the en- 
tire circulating medium of the country, until they were absorbed 
in duties, taxes and fees, due the general and State Governments ; 
and in this way the general debt, the burden, would scarcely have 
been felt among the people, except in the losses of the war, des- 
olation, plunder, and death. 

But no sooner had the bonds been issued and tlie fate of the 
people been irrevocably sealed, than Greeley and others clamored 
for an immediate specie basis. 



394 CRIlfES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

This would secure the payment of the bonds and their in- 
terest in gold, which would have been, as has been shown, at 
enormous interest, considering the cost of the bonds, which were 
to be fastened as a nameless, endless curse, upon our jjosterity for- 
ever. This subject is well worthy of illustration, and entirely 
susceptible of it. 

The fact was entirely covered up by the speculators and over- 
looked by the jjeople, that a great debt, created in an inflated 
currency, must be paid in an inflated currency, if paid at all. 
The ordinary transactions of life require this. The man who 
bought his farm when wheat was a dollar a bushel, and pork was 
ten dollars per hundred pounds, and made his first payment, 
hoping to pay the remaining debt out of the proceeds of his crop, 
when wheat falls to fifty cents a bushel and pork to three dollars 
a hundred, he will have to duplicate his crop of wheat and trip- 
licate his stock of pork, or surrender his farm and lose his first 
payment. 

AVhat is true of private affairs, is preeminently true of the 
affairs of the public. 

Even now, if the immediate payment of these first mortgages in 
treasury notes, precisely what they were originally exchanged for, 
would relieve the country of the National Banks, another body 
of leeches, fastened upon the body political, with the collectors, 
assessors, and the whole retinue of government cormorants, would 
feast upon the labors of the poor. To this might be returned the 
answer, that this would beget general ruin and destroy the value 
of the currency. But the currency which we now have, has no 
value; it is neither a measure nor standard of value, and to the 
people of the country, it is of the very least possible importance, 
what becomes of it. Whatever else may become of the present 
currency, the issue of the Treasury notes would relieve the people 
of tlie burdens of taxation to pay the interest on the bonds, 
upon the one hand, and give to the country a currency, which 
the law has declared a legal tender, without the additional taxation 
to support thousands of banks, and tens of thousands of bank- 
ers' clerks, tellers, and their useless and extravagant army of 
public profligates. And if the government, which has been buy- 
ing its own paper, at thirty-six to fifty cents on the dollar, wants 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 395 

to pay the debt and redeem its notes, it can do it even at lower 
figures than it has ever touched before, and at once return to a 
gold and silver basis ; the debt is due from the poor people, and 
let the money be bought up at the lowest possible figures. 

It is a duty in honesty and candor, duly to notily the bond- 
holders that this is the only conceivable way in which the bonds 
may approximate to a final payment. 

THE SECOND CRIME OF THE NATIONAL BANKING SYSTEM WAS 
THE LEGITIMATE OFFSPRING OF THE FIRST. 

The Secretary of the Treasury talks of reducing the volume 
of the currency, and, at an early day, to resume specie payment. 

The thing is preposterous, unless the government chooses this 
as the most direct road to repudiation, for in that case the j)ay- 
ment of the debt is impossible. 

The return of a million of men to agricultural pursuits, will 
bring down the price of every kind of produce to a merely nom- 
inal value, and leaving the Western farmers without a compen- 
sating market, except the unprofitable one, created by famine. 

The volume of currency is contracting already in the rural 
districts, and then comes the crash. Then must be realized this 
self-demonstrating argument, that whoever oioes more than he is 
worth, and spends more than he makes, is hanhrupt. 

TPIE BONA FIDE RESUME OF SPECIE BASIS, WHILE THE BONDS 
ARE IN EXISTENCE, WOULD BE CRIME PERPETRATED AND 
A GIGANTIC FRAUD OF THE BONDHOLDERS UPON THE 
PEOPLE ; WHEREBY THEY DOUBLE THE VALUE OF THE 
GOVERNMENT BONDS AND IN THE SAME RATIO DISABLE 
THE PEOPLE TO PAY THEM. 

Mr McCulloh congratulates the country upon the exceeding 
great revenue from duties and other sources, and makes this the 
basis of his hojjes of an early return to specie payment, and the 
easy and ready facility for the payment of the public debt. His 
illustrious predecessor, Albert Gallatin, entirely differs with Sec- 
retary McCulloh. Mr. Gallatin says : 

" The unforscen, unexampled accumulation of the public reve- 



396 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

nue, was one of the 'principal proximate causes of the disasters 
that foUowedJ' This was not only true of the great financial 
crisis that convulsed the United States banks, through the bank 
issues and stock gambling, but it is universally true in every 
system of irresponsible banking, where there is no specie pay- 
ment. The bank paper falls far below par, and then there is an 
impossibility of buying any property or paying any debt abroad, 
except with gold and silver, for just as fast as the precious metals, 
■whether in coin or bullion, are unlocked from the coffers of the 
miser and flow into the channels of trade, they are swept away 
in the current of commerce, and used to pay for every conceiva- 
ble luxury consumed by the rich bondholders, who, secure in his 
income from the bondage of the people, is only concerned about 
inventing means to expend what he has made, and provide to 
waste in extravagance, what the foolish people are paying in self- 
denial. 

The gold and silver of the country is soon disposed of; and 
the very day that an attempt is made to resume the specie pay- 
ment and restore a specie basis in the transactions of the business 
of the country, every avenue of trade will realize Avhat is now 
startlingly manifest to thoughtful men, that we are utterly and 
hopelessly bankrupt. It is not within the reach of human power 
to avert the approaching calamity, and this is quite well under- 
stood among intelligent financiers. Among the stock-gamblers, 
the only purpose in view, is to postpone the time and prolong 
the day of the final explosion. 

In the meantime, the shrewd and unscrupulous, M'ho have con- 
tributed their full share to the general bankruptcy, will econo- 
mize their means, arrange their affairs, shift their men on the chess- 
board and shuffle the cards ; so that the poor and middle classes 
may be left with an empty hand, in a game where the rich always 
win, the poor always lose, and capital lies as a sponge to drink 
up the hard earnings of labor. 

But in the contraction of the currency, precisely the same crime 
for the same purpose, ruinous in itself, was repeated, which was 
first committed in its expansion. 

In regard to the return to a specie basis, Albert Gallatin says, 
" Its process loas much too prompt. The legislature was not, and 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 397 

could not be, aware how slow and gradual the diminution of dis- 
counts must be, in order that universal distress may not ensue.'' 

The violent and precipitate changes to Avhich we have subjected 
the value of the miserable rag system, which we call currency, 
would ruin any people under heaven. 

K^othing but a miracle, where miracles are neither wrought 
nor promised, could save us from bankruptcy. Let us for a mo- 
ment look at these sudden transitions of the currency. In Jan- 
uary, 1862, the legal tender notes were currency at par. In De- 
cember of the same year, it required one hundred and sixty dol- 
lars of this paper to buy one hundred dollars in gold. Allowing 
the circulation of paper currency to have been seven hundred 
millions, then, in the transaction of business, there was a loss of 
four hundred and twenty millions of dollars, which fell on those 
in whose hands the change occurred. This was inevitable, for 
the one hundred and sixty dollars paid in December, was of no 
more value than the one hundred dollars borrowed in January. 
In any part of the civilized world, only gold and silver would have 
been received in payment of any exchange or commodity bought 
with this one hundred and sixty dollars. Then somebody lost 
sixty dollars in legal tender, which was required to buy the gold 
dollar of the banker, your tea of the Chinese, your coffee of the 
West Indies, and other necessaries, to say nothing of the luxuries, of 
life. This loss was not sustained by the banker any more than 
the trap was laid to catch the trapper. The capitalists of the 
country who took charge of the government in 1861, well under- 
standino- the theory of our financial revolution which was to ac- 
company the entire change of our form of government, improved 
the occasion, and made the disasters of the country minister to 
their munificence ; whilst every orphan, widow and superannuated 
person living on their income, invested in property such as rents^ 
annuities, etc., were robbed of the difference between one dollar 
in gold in January, and one dollar in paper in December,— just 
thirty seven and one-half per cent of the entire value of his 
debt. But in July, 1864, the one hundred dollars in gold due 
for money lent years before, was paid in legal tender, when it re- 
quired of that paper two dollars and eighty-five cents to buy a dol- 
lar in o-old ; which subjected the creditor to a loss of sixty-five and 



398 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

seven-tenth per cent, of his whole debt, — an aggregate loss upon 
tlie currency of the country of four hnndi'ed and fifty-nine million 
nine hundred thousand, or nearly two-thirds of the whole curren- 
cy in circulation in the country. 

This was another positive loss of that amount of money by 
somebody. Just at that very time, when the national credit was 
simply as brown ])aper with the risks of a lottery, the Secretary 
of the Treasury placed enormous sums of " Assignats," " 3Ian- 
dats,'^ '^ East India Company stock," "^lississipjn bubble scrip" or 
the different style of bonds, were thrown upon the market to con- 
tract the inflated currency. These bonds are a mortgage on the 
United States to pay one dollar in gold for thirty-four cents and 
three mills ; in plainer language, the government engaged to pay 
three dollars for one, and thus pay 18 per cent, per annum on each 
dollar in gold. 

Two-thirds of this debt was a naked robbery upon the 
labor of the country, perpetrated by Secretary Chase. 

Having disposed of these bonds to American and European 
capitalists, the basis of their aristocracy was complete. There 
was some exception to this general rule. Strange as it may 
sound to the ear of common sense, yet it was announced that a 
few vagrant fifty and one hundred dollar bonds were issued for 
the accommodation of the poor. Perhaps several out of many 
hundred millions of dollars were bought up by the mechanics 
and others, who could command a fcAV hundred dollars in money. 
Like everything held by this class of j^ersons, it Avas by but a 
feeble tenure. And there was a speculation of slight moment 
in getting these bonds out of the hands of this class of public 
creditors. The conspiracy of Secretarys' agents and Senators, 
etc., went to work to depreciate the bonds, and leave them at a 
discount, which alarmed those bondholders who were not in the 
secret. Such were glad to sell them at a discount, which was 
precipitated by the necessities upon them, for the current expenses 
of living. After this temporary panic, the Secretary of the 
Treasury, in order to make the bonds more valuable, and ap- 
proximate a gold standard, so that the capital of the country 
might be drawn from its legitimate channels, went into the 
market to beat down the gold, (or really to raise the standard of 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 399 

the bonds), and give a fictitious value to the new bank paper, so 
that one dollar in gold, which cost $2.85, may now be bought 
for $1.25, which, in a circulation of $700,000,000 to the holders 
of money, is equal to the enormous sum of $1,120,000,000, more 
than one-eleventh of the whole taxable real and personal prop- 
erty of the United States, according to the census of 1860. 

These fluctuations have been by design, and growing out of 
the very nature of the stock-gambling, upon which the national 
banking system is established. The aggregate losses of the 
country during the crusade against liberty and rational civil 
government, may be summed up as follows, namely : 

By depreciation of the currency from January, 

1862, to January, 1863 $ 420,000,000 

From January, 1863, to July, 1864 457,000,000 

From July, 1864, to April, 1866 1,120,000,000 

Making a total of. $1,997,000,000 

All of which has resulted from a violation of Mr. Gallatin's 
maxim, which heads these remarks. 

Now it is true that these depreciations did not take money 
from the country; it passed from the hands of Americans. 
This very fact made it worse, that it passed from the hands of 
poor Americans to rich Americans ; from the ignorant, unsus- 
pecting, and the confiding, into the hands of the shrewd, de- 
signing, and faithless, just as all of this debt will, which is due 
among ourselves, to ourselves, and creates distinctions based 
upon that fact, and makes them, therefore, the more odious. 

If the business and labor of the country are to be 
REDUCED TO A SPECIE BASIS, which the Secretary demands, 
then must the people demand that these bonds and notes be re- 
duced to a specie basis. 

The Secretary of the Treasury has been voluminous in his 
essays upon the public faith, honor and credit, in the payment 
of European capitalists, who, after grinding their own poor people 
to powder, come to America to reinvest the interest extorted 
from them in American bonds, and extend their aristocratic 
dominion to the laboring classes of the United States, in part- 



400 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

nership with the demagogues, usurers, and extortioners, who en- 
slave their neighbors to riot upon their industry. Is it not a 
most remarkable fact that this astute gentleman, with all of the 
great body of interested financiers, who are fastidiously affected 
about American honor, have never uttered one word about the 
rights of the people whose property is mortgaged by this terrible 
taxation ? 

The debt Avas created in an inflated currency, which virtually 
repudiated about sixty per cent, of every debt which it assumed 
to pay upon the one hand, and gave an increased nominal value 
to the property of the country upon the other hand. 

Upon a specie basis to which you reduce the currency to make 
things even, the debt payable, and the government solvent, the 
debt should be at once reduced, as not only the first, but the 
only step which may be taken in the pathway of ultimate set- 
tlement. By a specie basis is meant the exact amount of specie 
which it required to buy these bonds at the date of issue. 

The Secretary of the Treasury has been jJutting gold on the 
market to excite the value of this flimsy, ragged money, and in 
the same ratio, increase the public debt. In this he has committed 
a crime, perpetrated a direct robbery on labor, which must be 
taxed to pay it. 

This truth is susceptible of easy illustration. Suppose the 
debts of the country. Federal, State, county, corporate and indi- 
vidual, of every kind, all told, amount to $8,000,000,000, which 
is not wide of the mark ; suppose that this debt was contracted, 
when one dollar in gold could have bought three dollars in legal 
tender in the market, then one dollar in gold would have paid 
three dollars of this debt. The Secretary of the Treasury, am- 
bitious to keep up Avhat he calls the credit of the government, 
hurries post-haste into the market to sell his gold, and thereby 
make his bonds and paper more valuable, and virtually increase 
the debt up to a par value in gold, for Avhich the country re- 
ceived but about forty per cent., including frauds, thefts, decep- 
tions, &c., &G. 

In this process the Secretary commits a double crime. In the 
first place he depreciates the nominal value of produce and 
property in the exact ratio in which he travels toward a specie 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 401 

payment. But he does not thereby depreciate the debt, interest 
or value of the bonds ; but on the contrary, whenever he has 
succeeded in reducing the currency to a specie standard, tlie 
corresponding vahie of labor is reduced, and, to the farmers of 
the country, he has practically increased the debt three-fold. 

By this course he is deceiving the country in regard to our 
ability to pay the public debt. He is giving to the bonds a fic- 
ticious value, which will be exploded upon the announcement 
of a return to a specie payment. By this means capital is with- 
drawn from commerce, navigation, manufactures and agriculture, 
amounting to more in the injury inflicted than could be counter- 
acted by all of the duties, bounties, prohibitions and drawbacks 
the government might choose to bestow upon these various 
branches of wealth, industry and public enterprise. What is still 
worse in a corresponding ratio, the people who have to pay the 
interest on the bonds, find their means to pay the debt diminish 
in exact proportion with the par value of their bonds. 

The zeal of Secretary McCulloh may be justly likened to 
the sinner who procrastinates ; has each day one day's more sin to 
repent of, and one day less in which to repent. So, every dollar 
in legal tender exchanged for bonds, gave to the people one dol- 
lar more to pay, and subtracting it from the value of the cur- 
rency, gave them one dollar less to pay it in. But in the re- 
duction of the circulating medium to a specie standard, precisely 
the same thing is done in a different manner, by the apprecia- 
tion of the price of bonds. 

All of the hollow expedients of Chase, Fessenden, and 
McCulloh, to make this paper equal to gold, are and must be, 
a failure forever. Each miserable subterfuge has only increased 
the value of the public debt, and to the same extent crippled the 
power of the people to pay it ; and diverted the productive cap- 
ital of the country from business into the Treasury of the United 
States, from whence it cannot return, without the enormous rates 
of interest indicated and illustrated above, upon the bonds and 
upon the notes issued from them. 

The great difficulty with Secretary McCulloh is, that he 
overlooks the mortifying fact that he is a victim and tool of the 
designing Chase, who fled from his own cob-house to the Su- 
26 



402 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

preme Bench, to try patriots for treason, and exercise his judi- 
cial functions to rob the people of the South of their property, 
to indemnify the people of the North for robberies perpetrated 
upon them by himself. 

The cardinal and overshadowing evil from which all the other 
trivial evils flow, is, that we are in debt, and have not means 
adequate to its liquidation. 

The taxes, duties and stamps eat up our productive power. 
These alone would be burdensome if the merchandize and wares 
Ave use were freely bestowed upon us; but added to the prices, 
they are onerous, enormous, ruinous ; and each day growing 
more burdensome by the monstrous follies of the men who ad- 
minister our affairs. 

The first repudiation of existing debts by positive legislation, 
was a wrong difficult to apologize for; but the duplication and 
triplication of the private and public debt of the country by an 
artificial appreciation of an irredeemable currency, is even more 
reprehensible. 

Each step has been a faux pas, and each proposed remedy a 
hollow subterfuge, not approximating the dignity of a sophism. 
Every transparent claptrap and each exploded theory of the past, 
has been revived to sustain this tottering trestle-work of fraud 
and corruption. The whole has failed — failed worse than assig- 
nats — worse than the laws of Mississippi, a bubble worse than 
Continental currency ; for each of these in their day in some 
measure, freed the country from debt. But this paper phantom 
has reared in its shadow an overbearing power far exceeding in 
atrocity and insolence, the usurpations of the East India Com- 
pany. 

The last whim of the Secretary of the Treasury assumes that 
the people of the country are idiots, and proposes a sinking fund 
of one per cent, compounded, &c., &c.; the very same miserable 
stuff which John Law proposed as the introduction of his French 
Financial Jubilee. But who will borrow at this compound in- 
terest ? There is a refreshina; humor in the cool and calculatino- 
impudence of the giant borrower turning loaner on the small 
scale of the sinking fund ; and is only equalled by the proposition 
to loan Mexico some twelve millions of dollars, whilst the 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 403 

United States were borrowing hundreds of millions, for the 
purpose of restoring order in that distracted country, when an- 
archy was reigning supreme in our midst, and hundreds of thous- 
ands were dying in camp hospitals and battle-fields. There 
have been many embarassed borrowers ; but never yet was one 
known to pay his debt by loaning. 

The financiers of England and France each have tried and 
failed in this same project. The payment of the debt has always 
been impossible. These varied plans are all absurd. The Na- 
tional Banking system makes it doubly so. 

The capacity of a people to pay a debt created in an inflated 
currency with the same means only in a contracted currency, is 
very fully illustrated in the every day transactions of life. 

When the debt was in the act of creation, corn brought one 
dollar in cash in the market at the principal railroad stations in 
the "Western States. Now, the one-third of this is regarded a 
high price, except Avhere famine reigns. This, then, is a con- 
traction of two-thirds of the productive power of the country 
which must meet this debt. Or it is in fact a triplication of the 
debt. For the debt is not diminished with the means of its 
payment one farthing, either in its principal or its accruing 
interest. 

In all the vacillations of business, commerce, and navigation, 
the debt is stationary, and the interest well established. 

The usurers have so adjusted this, that whoever may lose or 
suffer diminution in their claim, the bonds and the Banker's claim 
suffer nothing. 

The last great crime in the establishment of the National 
Banks, is their insolvency, and the impossibility of securing the 
currency issued from them. The question of their bankruptcy 
is only one of time. ■ 

The whole paper ftibric rests upon the bonds and immutability 
of the public credit. 

These can be no more secure than the Continental money, nor 
the obligation any greater to redeem them ; but it was never 
redeemed. 

These are no more sacred than the United States Bank of 
PcDnsylvania, and it was closed up in insolvency. 



404 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

They can have no stronger written guarantees than those of 
the Constitution which protected African Slavery, which was 
protected by the British Government from 1680, and afterwards 
by the Constitution, and recognized by all the judicial authority 
of the land. And slavery has been abolished. 

The security of the bonds is no greater. The private inter- 
ests of the people are the only indemnity in popular govern- 
ments for the enforcement of claims of any character which must 
be adjudicated before courts. This must, of necessity, be true ; 
for our highest courts, in any question of government, is simply 
a select political assembly, scarcely ever free from the worst taints 
of party prejudice, and interest, as time hath abundantly dem- 
onstrated. It is growing all the time more so. 

AVhen parties are formed, as formed they will be, upon this 
basis, repudiation will be a direct issue, to be voted for or against. 
At first, it will be rejected, but the debt will still remain ; the 
interest will be still accruing, the taxes will still be growing, and 
the people will be unable to pay them. The persistency of the 
bold men who strike for liberty and lead the people, will gain 
them position and power. 

This issue will scatter the present combination of parties to 
the four winds. Inspired by hopes of plunder, led and control- 
led by trimmers and malignant men, their combinations are nei- 
ther powerful nor enduring. 

They are like the vultures that follow the scent of armies, to 
gather up the oiFal. Or like sneak-thieves and shoplifters, who 
are always idle and never busy, except when the cry of fire gives 
them notice of opportunity to load themselves with j)lunder. 
But in a great contest, such men will soon give place to earnest 
friends of true liberty, who will sweep the bonds from the face 
of the earth, and with them will fall the Banks, tottering to the 
ground. 



CKIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 



405 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Expiring Crime of Chase's Banking System. 

Annexed is a statement showing the amount of the national 
debt for each year, since the organization of the government : 

1791 ^75,463,476 1821 $89,987,428 

1792 .. 77,227,924 1822 93,549,677 

1793 :." 80352,634 1823 90,875,877 

1794 ; 78427,405 1824 90,269,778 

1795 80,747,587 1825 83,788,433 

179G 83,862,172 1826 81,054,060 

1797 . 82,064,479 1827 73,987,357 

1798 .,. 79,228,529 1828 67,475,044 

1799 ' . 78,408,670 1829 58,481,414 

1800 82,976,294 1830 48,665,406 

1801:::: 83,038,051 1831 ^fA^^ill 

1802 80,712,632 1832 14,322,235 

1803* 77,054,686 1833 7,001,099 

1804 ::::;.'. 86;427,121 1834 4,760,082 

1805 82,312,150 1835 37,733 

1806 75,723,271 1836 37,513 

1807 69^218,399 1837 1,878,224 

1808 -65,196,318 1838 ,f'^S'S?o 

1809 57,023,192 1839 11,988,738 

1810 53,173,217 1840 5,125,078 

1811 48,005,588 1841 6,727,398 

1812 45,209,738 1842 15,028,486 

1813 55,962,828 1843 • 26,898,953 

1814 81,487,846 1844 26,143,896 

1815 99,833,660 1845 16,801,647 

181G ....127,334,934 1846 '. 24,256,495 

1817 103,491,965 1847 45,659,495 

1818 103,466,634 1848 65,804,450 

1819 95,529,648 1849 64,704,693 

1820.:::: 9i;oi5;566 i85o 64,228,238 



406 CKIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 

1851 $62,560,395 1857 $25,165,155 

1852 67,560,390 1858 44,910,778 

1853 56,336,187 1859 58,754.699 

1854 44,975,456 1860 74,985/299 

1855 39,960,733 1861 110;000,000 

1856 30,963,210 

A thrill of unutterable anguish penetrates the soul of an 
American, in overlooking the above table. 

The long 2^eriod required to extinguish the meagre part of the 
revolutionary debt assumed by our fathers, was an unheeded 
varning to their children. 

The protracted period, through which the small debt of 1816 
draggled through the economical administrations of Monroe, 
Adams and Jackson, reminds us that the youngest child will not 
live to see the great debt of the civil war liquidated. The war 
debt of 1816 would not have carried us through six months of 
our present peace establishment kept up by armies, nor paid 
one-half of the annual interest on our debt. 

The following table exhibits values, but docs not exhibit the 
bold robberies of the Aveekly faro-bank, fed upon the fluctuations 
of this miserable currency. 

VALUE OP A CURRENT DOLLAR TO COIN. 

The following table shows the relative value of a currency 
dollar to coin, at the different rates of premium from 1 to 100. 
The fractions given are as near the cents as they can be approach- 
ed, without the aid of parts of mills. The table Avill be found 
valuable for preservation, and will tend to undeceive many who 
are of the impression that the amount of premium must be sub- 
tracted from the currency dollar, in order to ascertain its relative 
value : ' 

Vahie of a Value of a 

Prem. Cuyrent Dollar. Prem, Current Dollar. 

101 99 106 94| 

102 98 107 931 

103 97 108 921 

104 961 109 9l| 

105 951 110 90t 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 407 



P'ahie of a Vahie of a 

Prein. Current Dollar. Preiu. Current Dollar, 

m 90 153 65| 

112 891 154 65 

113 881 155 641 

114 87| 156 64^ 

115 86f 157 63f 

116 861 158 631 

117 851 159 621 

118 84f 160 521 

119 841 161 62 

120 83| 162 61f 

121 821 163 61| 

122 82 164 ,....61 

123 811 165 60f 

124 80| 166 60i 

125 80 167 591 

126 79| 168 591 

127 78f 169.... 591 

128 ,78i 170 58| 

129.... 771 171 581 

130 ...77 172 581 

131 76| 173 57| 

132 75f 174 , 571 

133 75i- 175 571 

134 74f 176 56f 

135 71 177 561 

136 731 178 55| 

137 73^ 179 55f 

138 721 180 551 

139 ,72^ 181 551 

140 711 182 55 

141 71 183 54| 

142 70f 184 541 

143 691 185 ,. 54 

144 691 186 53f 

145 69 187 531 

146 681 188 531 

147 68 189 53 

148 671 190 52f 

149 67^ 191 52| 

150 65| 192 52J 

151 661 193..., 511 

152 65| 194 511 



408 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL. WAR. 

Value of a Value of a 

Prem: Current Dollar. Prem. Ctirreiii Dollar. 

195 511 198 501 

196 51 199 50| 

197 50|- 200 50 

These gamblers would induce bankruptcy anywhere, and we 
cannot hope to avert the hand of fate. 

The following illustrates to simple minds the process of ruin : 



1. $1.50 in paper buys one dollar in gold. The $1.50 

in paper is worth 66| 

2. $1.25 in paper buys $1.00 in gold. The $1.00 in paper 

is worth 80 

Amount lost on each dollar 13f cts. 

Allowing the currency to be $800,000,000. 

There is an actual loss in the discrepancy of $107,000,000. 

Should this money appreciate, that $1.60 of paper is worth 
$1.00 in gold, then the paper is worth 52| cents on the dollar. 
Then there is a distributed loss of the difference of $220,000,- 
000. It does not mend the matter that this money remains in 
the hands of Americans. So does the money won and lost 
among gamblers, with this difference, that gamblers play back 
with the chances of loss, and risk their purse. In this game, as 
fast as the money is won of the people, it is carefully funded in 
gold and silver, preparatory to the coming storm which Heaven 
will not avert, although it fall with pitiless rage upon the 
poor. 

The following is a statement of the bank note circulation of 
the country at various periods of highest and lowest issues prior 
to the war : 

January, 1830 $ 61,324,000 

" 1835 103,692,495 

" 1836 140,301,038 

" 1837 149,185,890 

" 1843 58,564,000 

" 1856 195,747,950 

" 1857 214,778,822 

" 1858 155,208,344 

" 1860 207,102,200 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 409 

It will be noticed by the statement that the bank note circu- 
lation of the United States increased from $61,324,000 to $149,- 
185,890 between the 1st of January, 1830, and the 1st of Janu- 
ary, 1837, in which latter year the great financial collapse took 
place, fell from $149,185,890 in 1837, to $58,504,000 in 1843, 
and rose to $214,778,822 on the first of January, 1857, in which 
year the next severe crisis occurred ; falling during that year to 
$155,208,344, and rising to $207,102,000 on the 1st of January, 
180O. 

The following is a statement of bank deposits and loans in the 
same years : 

}'ears. Deposits. Loans. 

January 1, 1830 $ 55,560,000 $200,451,000 

" 1835 83,081,000 365,163,000 

" 1836 115,104,000 457,506,000 

« 1837 127,397,000 525,115,000 

" 1843 56,168,000 254,544,000 

« 1856 212,706,000 634,183,000 

« 1857 230,351,000 684,456,000 

« 1858 .- 185,932,000 583,165,000 

« 1860 253,802,000 691,945,000 

On the 30th of September, the date of their last quarterly re- 
ports, the deposits and loans of the national banks (the Secretary 
has no reliable returns of these items from the few remaining 
State banks) were as follows : 

Deposits, individual and government $544,150,194 

Loans 485,314,029 

To which should be added — 
Investments in U. S. bonds and other U. S. securi- 
ties $427,731,600 

$913,045,629 

These figures are a history in themselves, exhibiting not- only 
the past and present condition of the country in matters of ex- 
ceeding interest, but indicating unerringly the dangerous direc- 
tion in which the financial current is sweeping. 



410 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

On the 1st January, in the memorable year 1837, the bank 
note circulation of the Uuited States was $149,185,890, the de- 
posits were $127,397,000, the loans $525,115,000. In January, 
1857, the year of the next great crisis, the circulation was $214,- 
778,822, the deposits were $230,351,000, the loans $684,456,000. 
There are no statistics to exhibit the amount of specie actually 
in circulation in those periods, but it would be a liberal estimate 
to put it at $30,000,000 for 1837, and $50,000,000 for 1857. 

The above report exhibits all of the premonitory symptoms 
of bankruptcy which we are now suffering under our present 
irresponsible banking system. Its failures, frauds, robberies, 
tricks, and overreachiugs, form its chief legal learning and litera- 
ture. 

The impossibility of the redemption of the national bank 
currency, becomes each day more absolute by its expansion. 

A cursory observation of this table leaves the impression that 
the banking system cannot explode. 

The banks have always more loaned out than the amount of 
their circulation and their deposits. "Whence the insolvency ? 
The solution is easy. 

In the first place, the banks loan nothing but a promise to 
pay, when they have nothing to pay that promise with. The 
specie in the vaults of the banks is never more in careful times 
than one-tenth of the value of their circulation. 

In the second place, as fast as the banks issue their notes, 
they gather up the coin and hoard it where the responsibilities 
of the bank may not reach it, and substitute paper in its stead ; 
then the banks break up their debtors by the extortions of 
usury for their own worthless promises to i^ay. 

All this goes well enough, until somebody wants gold and 
silver in considerable amounts, which the bank is not able to 
pay. This brings everybody to their senses. Everybody then 
rushes to the bank ; the bank closes, and can't pay. It 
issues, its notes on other banks, in payment to save itself, and 
othei^ banks do precisely likewise, and each depends on the 
other in a circle, all falling together. Having nothing to save 
themselves, they cannot hope to save each other. 

This very evil is now on the banking system. The bank 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 411 

notes have supplanted the greenbacks, wliich Avill soon be de- 
stroyed. Then the bank notes can not be redeemed with green- 
backs, but must be with gohl and silver. This the banks have 
not, nor have the people. The banks will explode, the people 
will have no money, can pay no debts, and must then abandon 
their property or repudiate. Confidence will give way, and 
then the banking system ceases, just as Mormonism, Mahom- 
niedanism, and every other fraud vanishes with the touch of 
analysis. AVith this will come ruin, disaster, crime, distress and 
disappointment, with all of the evils incident to universal bank- 
ruptcy. But terrible as this may be, we will be amply compen- 
sated by the relief which it will bring to the people. 



412 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER yill. 

John Law and Chase, with their Respective Systems, 

Insanity feeds on extravagance seasoned with absurdity. Fi- 
nancial insanity has a specific villainy in its composition and shows 
signs of intelligent aberrations, which makes the compound the 
most dangerous manifestation of craziness known to the philoso- 
phy of minds and money. Our insane philosophers are of a 
different character, and rather use the insanity of others to profit 
and play upon the imagination of the victims, while they very 
philosophically pocket the proceeds of their speculation. This 
class of financiers avail themselves of the intoxication of the people, 
upon some abstract question which has no legitimate connection 
with the public prosperity, but the agitation of which will provoke 
civil or foreign wars, and inaugurate a credit system, out of which 
the shrewd can coin fortunes of the blood and miseries of the peo- 
ple, who are used as passive instruments in the transaction. When 
this condition of things is contemplated, history is ransacked to 
find examples and precedents upon which to build the bubble, 
— with the same care that builders look through the various systems 
of architecture for plans on with which to rear their courts and 
temples. The projectors of our scheme exerted all their powers 
of research for this same purpose. John Law is their patron 
saint of financial glory ; and the assignats and mandats of Mira- 
beau and Robespierre, their beau ideals of national currency. Sec- 
retary Chase had searched every financial history to discover the 
most refined means of robbing the people without their knowledge, 
and plotting their ruin by indirection. There was nothing left 
undone in this way; he found and adopted it. He gained 
the most extraordinary victory over the people. He who had 
overturned the most essential branch of civil government, was 
appointed to administer the law, give sanction to its violation and 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 413 

cover up his crimes and defaults, which have been so complicated, 
and so easily susceptible of obliteration. John Law was the son 
of an Edinburgh goldsmith, and born in 1681. He commenced 
active business as a revenue officer, soon after the union of Scot- 
land and England, when the revenue was in great disorder. At 
this early day. Law projected the establishment of a bank, with 
paper issue to the amount of the value of all the lands in the 
kingdom. His scheme was promptly rejected with scarcely an 
entertainment by British statesmen. But it was the child of his 
fertile genius, the only offspring of his brain, which he cherished, 
until it ruined him and left an Empire in ruins, and its whole 
population suffering all that is common and peculiar to the over- 
throw of business and commerce. The story of John Law 
and French speculation, the Mississippi bubble and Gaulish ex- 
travagance, has been painted by the peerless pen of Washington 
Irving. It Avill not bear imitation. Law was a gambler and 
adventurer of the school of fine gentlemen. He fought a duel 
and killed a gentleman who fought to vindicate his sister, whom 
Law had debauched ; he fled the kingdom to escape punishment, 
and gave a romantic turn to his escapade by running away with 
another man's wife. He soon spent the small estate left him by 
his father. He visited Genoa and Venice, from both of which 
cities he was banished as a designing adventurer. At Turin he 
proposed his financial scheme to the Duke of Savoy, who treated 
it and himself in the same manner with the statesmen and bank- 
ers of England. Law, like every other scheming fanatic, knew 
no limit to his energy, and at last found his friend in the Duke 
of Orleans, who was then regent of the kingdom. His scheme 
proposed to pay the debt of the nation, which was to be assumed 
by an association, who would make enough in the operation to 
pay themselves for their labor. The Duke of Savoy repulsed 
Law by assuring him that he was not rich enough to turn spend- 
thrift. 

The basis of this system was confidence, and the Comptroller 
General Desmarets had to reject it, because confidence in every 
thing was destroyed. 

The Duke of Orleans had two thousand million of francs na- 
tional debt. The country was at peace. The people taken cap- 



414 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

tlve by novelty, were prepared for anything which wore a new 
face or promised indemnity to speculation, and offered some new 
jilan for capital to absorb the labor of the country, by making 
the laborers believe that they were living upon the products of 
capital. Law first established a bank of his own. He soon 
induced the regent to make it a bank of government deposit for 
all of the revenue of the kingdom; it afterwards became the 
great actuary of the Mississippi Company, which promised riches 
to every body. The public grew wild with the excitement, and 
the prospect of gain, drove the unemployed capital of Paris to 
seek a permanent investment in the joint stock of the Mississippi 
Compauy. Such was the spirit of this public gambling, that 
men exchanged their houses, stores, and means of living, for shares 
in the great concentrated capital of the Mississippi Comj)any. 
The bank paper, at first distrusted, Avas now circulated with 
startling profusion; it first doubled, soon quadrupled its circula- 
tion, and the jjcople dreamed it Avealth, and made it the basis of 
a fearful extravagance. Every body and every profession indulg- 
ed in every manner of luxury, which soon made its way into 
those countries which held commercial intercourse with France, 
and quietly carried off her gold, while her people were intoxicated 
witli the profusion of paper money. 

John Law's bank was declared "King's Bank." In 1718, it 
monopolized the trade of Senegal, acquired the privilege of the 
old East India Company, founded by the great French states- 
man, Colbert, but which had suddenly fallen into decay and 
abandoned its trade. To the merchants of Saint Mabo, it under- 
took to collect the public revenue; indeed, so absorbing was the 
business and scope of Law's bank, that all business seemed as a 
mere appendage to it, and tlie finances of the kingdom were at 
the mercy of this corporation of mere traders. This corporation 
presented a grandeur of establishment, and commanded such a 
vast variety of interest, and seemed based upon so solid a foun- 
dation, that its stock augmented to twenty times beyond its origi- 
nal value. 

The courtiers, adventurers, and gamblers, were living upon this 
public frenzy, which it was within the power, and certainly the 
duty of the regent to have promptly arrested, which he could at 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAPw 415 

any time have clone and saved the people from the consequent 
disaster; but his immediate friends were making an apparent for- 
tune in the general carnival, he looked no further than the pres- 
ent, and let thQ future take care of itself. The disorders of the 
currency became the source of their Avealth. The fluctuations in 
the value of their stock conferred upon men heretofore unknown, 
immense wealth, which, when, with proper foresight, they con- 
verted into other property, left them independent. In the short- 
est possible period of time, there were several wlio accumulated 
princely fortunes. Law himself, seduced by system and intoxi- 
cated by the general drunkenness of society, had fabricated so 
many bills that his chimerical value of paper in 1719, was eighty 
times greater than all of the specie circulation in the kingdom. 
The government paid in paper all of the State stock. The re- 
gent could no longer control a machine so immense, so compli- 
cated, and the rapid movement of which hurried him away in 
spite of himself. 

The old school financiers combined with the banks to drain 
the royal bank, by drawing considerable sums in specie from it 
every day. This made every one try to convert his paper into 
gold. This was impossible, as it always is in the great expansion 
of a credit system based upon confidence merely. The dispro- 
portion of specie to the paper issued, is enormous. Credit now 
began to find a foundation of fact, and exploded with a terrible 
crash. Then came the expedients which are always resorted to 
by princes, to save the sinking credit of the paper system. The 
regent issued edicts, but they were powerless. A real distress 
naturally succeeded to so much fictitious Avealth. After this, 
Law was appointed Comptroller-General of Finances, at the very 
time when it was utterly out of his power to perform the very 
duties of the station for which he was especially called. In 1720^ 
* a year marked by the total subversion of private fortunes, and 
the ruins of the finance of the kingdom, Law changed his alle- 
giance and religion, became a French Catholic, and lord of a 
splendid manor. The banker was metamorphosed into a Minis- 
ter of State. He was the associate of dukes, peers, mai'shals 
of France, and bishops of the Church, in the halls of the palace. 
He had not long been in his official position, until disorder was 



41 G CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

at its height. The Parliament of Paris opposed the follies of 
Law, and was driven from Paris to Pontoise, by the Prince, who 
still stood by Law with a royal fidelity. But before half a year 
of his official life had transpired, John Law was driven, by the 
ruined rabble, from Paris; carrying with him scarcely anything 
of all his vast accumulations, the merest figment of his evan- 
escent opulence. 

The Dutch and the English imbibed the spirit of stock-gam- 
bling, and built up rapid and immense fortunes, upon the public 
credulity. 

Amsterdam and London became largely involved in the same 
general folly, succeeded by the same general distress ; each sys- 
tem of swindling, never failed to find dupes among the people. 
Associations were formed to carry on imaginary commerce. Rot- 
terdam was ruined for a time. London was overwhelmed in 
1720. 

There resulted, from this mania in France and England, a 
prodigious number of failures, fraud, public and private robber- 
ies, and all of the moral depravity consequent upon ungovernable 
cupidity. 

But the abundance of money, and apparent wealth, reconciled 
the people to every species of usurpation which, at other times, 
in the history of France, would have precipitated a general rev- 
olution. 

The notable points of resemblance between Chase and Law, 
are very remarkable. Both were demagogues ; both were stock- 
gamblers; both rode into position under false pretences; both 
were for a time successful. Law kept his mistress, and intro- 
duced her into the royal palace, where she felt annoyed by the 
presence of the real ladies of France, and said " there was not 
so tiresome an animal in the world as a duchess." Chase changed 
the Treasury Department into a harem, where the seraglios of 
vile women were ostensibly employed in the service of the gov- 
ernment : yet kept for the most degrading purposes, under the 
auspices of the Comptroller, who, being retained by the Secre- 
tary in his place, voluntarily submitted to bearing the odium of 
the published scandal for the salary of office, and the vain-glo- 
rious privilege of appearing upon the fifty cent fractional cur- 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 417 

rency. Law traveled in state ; Chase exceeded this. He coast- 
ed the land ingovernmentvessels, at the public expense, amount- 
ing to many times the whole salary appropriated to him by the 
government. 

Law enriched himself, but Cliase endowed near relatives with 
special privileges, and made merchants and banking princes, with 
his wonderful munificence. The careful analogist will see those 
natural and striking peculiarities in Law developed in Chase. 
After reading the advertisement, for the sale of bonds, the fol- 
lowing will certainly exhibit the immediate fruits in a style 
startling to the simplicity of republican institutions : 

A lady, who has been on a visit to Mr. Jay Cooke's new pala- 
tial mansion, near Philadelphia, Avhose foundations were built 
on the blood and bones, and skeletons of American citizens, 
slain in hostile combat, thus writes : 

" I can't describe what it is like. I don't think anything 
grander, more beautiful, more splendid, or more in keeping, could 
be imagined. And the Cookes are just the kind of people to 
live in it. L. is a perfect brunette, and her sister S., who is 
younger, is a blonde. L.'s room is furnished in bright crimson 
satin, and S.'s in light blue satin. Just beyond their rooms is 
still another bedroom, which belongs to the girls, and is called 
the spare bedroom, and is intended for any friend whom they 
wish to invite to visit them. C. was occupying this room. 
Everything in the house, with the exception of Mrs. Cooke's 
boudoir and a few of the paintings, is American. Mr. Cooke 
would have nothing else. In the sitting-room is a large, old fash- 
ioned, open fire-place, with andirons, Avhich INIr. Cooke's mother 
presented to him. There is every kind of room in the house 
that you could think of — billiard-room ; amusement room, 
where they have a regular stage, foot-lights, &c.; music room, 
\vhere they have an elegant square grand Chickering piano. I 
can't tell you of all the rooms, for it would take me all night, 
and even then, you wouldn't have a very clear idea of them." 

This is, perhaps, a fair description of Secretary Chase's facto- 
tum, who accompanied him on his pleasure excursions. 

This fortune coined of misfortune ; this wealth extracted from 
poverty; this magnificence built of the self-denial of cabins and 
hovels, is explained by the picture of the peoj^le who pay the 
interest on the bonds sold to Mr. Jay Cooke. 
27 



418 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

" The average density of population in New York city, is 
equal to 32,000 per square mile, its 1100 acres of parks and 
other open spaces, being included in the estimate. Tliis 
gives to each person a space twelve yards long by eight 
wide, in which to live and move and have his being. But 
this breathing space is very unevenly distributed, for while 
the resident of the 12th ward may claim upon a fair division 
with his neighbors, 596 square yards for his individual com- 
fort, the dweller in the hovels and tenement shells of the 
lOtli ward must be thankful for seventeen yards ; and he Avho 
worries through a fevered sleep in tiie 11th ward, can claim but 
sixteen. These estimates include streets and other open spaces, 
so that the curious in such matters may judge of the close com- 
panionship which is enforced in these localities, ivhere men, women, 
and children, were ixicJced at the rate of one hundred and ninety- 
six thousand to the square mile. In other words, as shown by 
the tables which we published, the tract bounded by Division 
street, the Bowery, East Fourteenth street and the East river, 
comprising the 10th, 11th, 13th and 17th wards, and contain- 
ing 1.16 square miles, is populated by 196,441 persons, a 
greater number than were possessed by any city in the Union in 
1860, excepting New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Balti- 
more. The 10th ward has more people than Jersey City, Hart- 
ford or Mobile had at that time; the 11th exceeds the limits at 
that time of Charleston, Detroit, Pittsburg, Providence or San 
Francisco; while the 17th, covering but about one-half square 
mile, contains more people than did Albany, Louisville or 
"Washington." 

This condition of the poor is the penalty paid by the poor to 
the rich, and the calculation is easy. Just compute the amount 
spent and consumed on suck palaces, divide it by wages of poor 
men, and you then have the number necessary to keep it ; double 
the number, then you have the number of Jay Cooke's slaves 
who live on half fare. 

Here closes the analogy between these two men. 

Law was impelled, contrary to his better judgment, to accept 
the highest financial position in the French Government, just at 
a time when he could not make it available for either himself or 
the Government. Upon the other hand, 

Chase was driven on to the Supreme Bench, to rid Lincoln of 
a Presidential rival, at a time when the Bench could bring him 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 419 

jio honors, nor his services contribute anything to the jurispru- 
dence of the country. Law left the country in disguise, fleeing 
before the multitudes who had been ruined by his profligacy. 
Chase shifted his responsibility, and, entering upon his new 
career, exemplified precisely the same ability for the judicial 
ermine, that lie had shown for the exchequer — to defile and de- 
stroy it. As a Chief Justice of a Court before which all dis- 
putes must be adjudicated, he anticipated his judgments in Bank, 
in his political harangues among crazy, illiterate barbarians, in 
New Orleans, Charleston and Washington ; and in like manner 
before New England colleges, upon the very questions upon 
which he would be called to decide, as the principal member of 
the Court of last resort. William Sprague, a young, stupid and 
wealthy inebriate, who represents Rhode Island in the United 
States Senate, married the daughter of the Secretary, and con- 
trolled the speculations in cotton, amounting to many millions 
of dollars. To accommodate an evening party, Mrs. Sprague 
built a special house for her ball-room, for an evening carousal, 
at a heavy cost, and tore it away the next morning, in imitation 
of the extravagance of the reign of Nero, which every Depart- 
ment seemed anxious to emulate. 



420 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Squandering the Public Lands the Basis of Stock-Gambling. 

THE PRETEXT FOR STOCK-GAMBLING IN THE UNITED STATES 
TO PREVENT THE EARLY PAYMENT OF THE PUBLIC DEBT. 

The history of stock gambling, which has been many times 
written by graphic pens, would justify repetition, if not ampli- 
fication, did time and space permit. 

The great power and evil of this system, is, that it enables 
companies and individuals to treat the public credits and debts 
as gamblers do cards, giving to stocks a public value diiferent 
from the real value, making due allowances for the possible rise 
or fall in the market. In these transactions there are always 
two persons engaged : — the one who understands well the mar- 
ket, and the other who thinks that he does, but does not ; — in 
simple language, the shrewd who win, and the conceited who 
lose. 

This system is the source of fabulous wealth, and embraces all 
of the modern theories of banking tariif, wars, and consequent 
public debts and credits. It is the faro bank of our present 
system of politics. It capitalizes everything, and places a pros- 
pective, rather than an actual value upon all property ; and upon 
the products, profits and appreciations of property, audits com- 
binations, and pretends to fairly divide the difference between 
the present and prospective value of representative paper. 

Since the invention of old-fashioned falsehood in the infernal 
regions, there has perhaps never been a system of such universal 
fraud, as that of stock-gambling. It is the first-born child of 
paper money, and the parent of all the evils, crimes and decep- 
tions, corruptions and frauds, incident to periodical and wide- 
spread bankruptcy, in which the great body of a people are 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 421 

ruined in their property, whicli has been absorbed by the cunning 
few. This form of wickedness and source of sorrow, cannot 
exist without debt and public calamities, upon which it feeds and 
creates. 

The art of printing facilitates this mode of gambling in latter 
times, when it embraces in its range, railroads, telegraphs, salt, 
oil, cotton, woolen and iron manufactures, aud everything which 
has a doubtful or problematical value. 

The debt of Great Britain, contracted by the Revolution of 
1688, was perhaps the foundation of extensive stock-gambling 
in England. Upon this the Bank of England A\»as established in 
1697, which loaned the amount of its capital stock to the gov- 
ernment. The ambrotypes of this debt were issued in the form 
of bank notes. From that day to this, in every country where 
confidence can be commanded, to mortgage property upon the 
facile promises of gentlemen, bank notes are freely issued, and 
other forms of security enter into the circulating medium. 

The South Sea Joint Stock Company, John Law's Mississippi 
bubble, with its explosion of business and its train of miseries, 
which the great common sense of Colbert, the financial expe- 
rience of Turgot, and versatile genius of Necker, could only 
baffle, until the elements of discord sought vent in Revolution. 
This Revolution, having no money upon which to carry on its wars, 
gave rise to a stock-jobbing, which reached the fabulous sum of 
$8,437,535,000. • 

The stock-gambling of the world has been reduced to a sys- 
tem, and has its markets, and boards of trade. Boards of trade 
were established in France, at Toulon in 1549, at Rouen 1556, 
in London by Elizabeth in person in 1566. The Parisian 
Bourse was established in 1724. 

The first stock-gambling in America grew out of the Conti- 
nental money, which was issued to the amount of $359,000,000, 
in a population of not more than 3,500,000. This vast amount 
of irredeemable paper was reduced by a certain kind of funding, 
to $76,000,000 in 1795; and finally to $39,135,000 in 1812. 
The necessities of the war of the Revolution induced this sys- 
tem, but the determined virtue of our fathers, who were weary 
and ruined by a paper wealth, made them restive under its 
perpetuity. 



422 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

There was, however, one mode in which the most extravagant 
profligacy might be indulged unsuspected, under various false 
pretences, and build up a system of stock -gambling in the dis- 
tribution of the public lands. 

The public lands were given in trust by the older States for 
the payment of the public debt, and held sacred for that pur- 
pose. 

In our earlier history, from this there was no digression. 

But for several years these lands had been used as the basis 
of a system of stock-gambling, under the shallow and false pre- 
tense of giving bounties to soldiers. This commenced in the 
payment of the soldiers of the earlier wars, then to the INIexican 
soldiers, then was extended to the surviving soldiers of the war 
of 1812, then to soldiers of the Black Hawk, Florida, and other 
Indian Avars. 

These gifts were ostensibly bestowed upon the soldier or his 
legal representatives, but in fact, was a scrip issued for the bene- 
fit of stock-gamblers, bought up for a few drinks of whiskey, in 
the certificates of discharge ; and of all the scrip issued, not one 
soldier, or his family, in every fifty, received any benefit from this 
scrip, and it was not intended that they should. The whole 
scheme was one laid by Congressmen and speculators, to swindle 
both the soldiers and the government, and the scheme was a 
success. You may now see homeless Mexican soldiers wander- 
ing through the land, who Sold their certificates of discharge for 
a meal's victuals or a night's lodging, under the very shadow of 
palaces reared by the money coined of their blood. In this 
way the double wrong was perpetrated, the soldier robbed of 
his legitimate pension, and the government defrauded of the 
richest mineral mountains, and the most productive valleys upon 
the face of the earth. 

Just at the time when this sacred trust-fund should have been 
scrupulously appropriated to the payment of the public debt, 
now frightfully augmenting, it was under charitable pretences 
converted into scrip, which soon found its way into the cofiers of 
the brokers. 

Lands were granted to build agricultural colleges, under pre- 
tence of educating the poor of the country, to till the land. This 
was a double fraud in the interest of stock-gambling. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 423 

First. These pieces of scrip were sold at less than one-half of 
the accredited land office value, to build these colleges. Second. 
When the colleges are built, they will be appropriated to the 
use of tlie children of the rich, precisely as the military academy 
at AVest Point and other military institutions have been, and for 
the purposes of education, be the merest farce. 

These grants were unjust in principle and wrong in policy. 
If the general government has power to educate the States in 
specific learning, then the money should have been directly 
appropriated, without sacrifice of value. 

These lands were, in like manner, given for homesteads with 
equal injustice. The government had no more power to give 
away the public lands, than it had to appropriate the money with 
which they are bought, to buy blacksmiths', carpenters', or 
bricklayers' tools for young people just entering the trade. 

This extravagant waste of the resources of the country is but 
a part of the funding system, to make stock-jobbing a perpetual 
institution, for which it is not improbable that the government 
may establish a bureau ; and, like the French, subjected to gov- 
ernment espionage, as they have already disposed of otiier gaming, 
houses of prostitution, &c. 

This is a humiliating commentary upon both our wealth and 
prosperity, that the greatest gold producing country of mod- 
ern times, is cursed with a worthless, irredeemable currency, 
without a dollar of gold for business, exchange, or commerce. 
But this comes of stock-gambling, and will continue with it. 

Is this not sorrowful, that in less than five years from the 
beginning of our indebtedness, we were paying more interest 
upon our debt than any other government upon the face of the 
earth? With a population and resources greatly inferior to that 
of Great Britain, Russia, or France, that all of the property, 
labor, and accumulation of three centuries, is squandered in the 
fraudulent enforcement of a political vagary by incompetent 
men, — all for a war which may be repeated at every period when 
force is chosen, instead of reason, for the arbitrament of disputes, 
until the country is left without military force, financial credit, 
or the semblance of justice in the government, or freedom in the 
spirit of the people, and the public lands held to secure the pay- 
ment squandered without a purpose. 



424 CRIMES OF THE ClYLL WAK. 



CHAPTEE X. 

French Assignats and National Bank Notes. 

When Robespierre had thoroughly engaged the French people 
in the horribl e revolution, he was puzzled to create a fund to 
carry on a war -which jjromised no ending. Those who held 
bullion were early removing their effects to such places as would 
elude the search of the hungry Jacobins. The banks, of course, 
would surrender nothing to politics, and there was but this one 
thing left to Robespierre, to pledge the credit of his revolution 
for its success. If it succeeded, to pay the debt ; if it failed, to 
let the debt go in the general defeat with the rest. AVhen he 
pledged the credit of his bloody usurpation, he assumed to pledge 
the wealth, honor, and military strength of the French people 
for the scraps of paj)er, which promised to pay vast sums of 
money to ravaging armies, for destroying their property and lib- 
erty ; to usurpers for overturning the established system of gov- 
ernment and to diplomats, for negotiating with foreign govern- 
ments, to recognize the new condition of things. For this pur- 
pose paper money, the supple tool of tyranny in all modern 
governments, was the first subterfuge. It was a " first mort- 
gage " upon all the realty and personalty of France, which was 
not only a legal tender, but it was an imprisonable offence to re- 
fuse it for any marketable commodity whatever. The revolu- 
tionists issued their legal tender, which they denominated assig- 
nats ; they forced the issue and employed violence, to make the 
people take them until they became utterly worthless. The his- 
tory of this currency so exactly resembles that of our own revo- 
lutionists, it seems the emanation of the same brain, based upon 
the same political theories, with the same precise purpose in 
view, tending to analogous results. The revolutionists bore a 
striking resemblance to each other. The boldly avowed plans 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL W\U. 425 

of Robespierre were not more shameful, and were wonderfully- 
similar to those of Stevens, Greeley, and the abler revolutionists 
of America. The people of France could not be expected vol- 
untarily to pay the expenses of revolution, to destroy their 
national glory, their proud and brilliant history by fanatics, any 
more than will the people of the United States, when they re- 
turn to reason, implicitly accept the transmitted debt to pay for 
the overthrow of liberty and the Constitution. The basis of 
the issue of the assignats and that of the debt of the United 
States, is singularly the same. The payment of the assignats 
and the payment of the national debt, Avill not materially differ 
in the end. The French fanatics declared the confiscation of all 
the landed property of the clergy of the kingdom, and with the 
money thus derived, proposed to redeem the assignats ; 400,000,- 
000 of this currency were issued by the constituent assembly, 
with the consent of Louis XVI., before he was led to the block. 
Yielding to this extravagant demand, was the first unfortunate 
step to the fatal conclusion of his reign. 

During the same year, Mirabeau, to enrich himself, his family, 
friends, and immediate partizans, by the possession of the landed 
estates, tried to secure the issue of 2,000,000,000 new assignats, 
was prevented only by wiser members, who saw through the 
transparent veil which failed to cover up his designs. 

By this plan the rich usurers would own the landed estates and 
wealth of the nation, which was insufficient to redeem the as- 
signats ; in this wise, they would own both and hold perpetual 
mortgage on the labor of the people. 

Precisely in this way have the usurers and adventurers com- 
bined to own and destroy our own country ; to own what they 
could not destroy, and destroy what they could not own. The 
first issue of legal tender was based upon the contemplated con- 
fiscation of the property of the Southern States as the means of 
redemption. 

Thaddeus Stevens never hesitated to declare the utter impos- 
sibility of the payment of the public debt, unless they confisca- 
ted the property of the South. 

Stevens borrowed his views of Mirabeau, that the holders of 
securities would support the new order of things as the only 



426 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

security for redemption; both assume the same class of facts, in- 
volving the same ruinous theories. 

1. That the only hope of a government is the support it re- 
ceives from capital. Indeed, the labor of men, horses, and ma- 
chinery, is treated as the property of the capitalist, and as differ- 
ino; nothino; in character from each other. 

2. That those who are not owners of property, will, of neces- 
sity, blindly follow the dictation of capital. 

These theories could not outlive the spirit of revolution. The 
French and American revolutionists would enfoi'ce and record a 
robbery by one edict, and speak most delicately of honor in the. 
next. 

In all of their complicated theories, they overlooked the impos- 
ing financial facts, that debts, which are readily contracted by 
legislatures, are not paid by legislative enactments alone, but by 
money and labor extorted from the people ; that no resolution, 
declairing a debt eternally binding, is of any intrinsic value, 
unless the debtor is able to pay it. 

Each were repeating the foolish delusion upon all of the avenues 
of trade, that the debt was so generally distributed, that some part 
of it was due to every body; which is always the case in all 
bankruptcies, that the creditors are numerous enough, whilst 
every thing depends upon the number and wealth of the debtors. 

While the usurers were gathering up the wealth of the coun- 
try, to share it with the demagogues, who were distracting the 
finances by legislation, the work of explosion and repudiation 
was amply providing relief for the people and quietly working 
their way among the masses. 

The issue of assignats was continued until they reached 40,- 
000,000,000, and became utterly worthless, like continental money 
and confederate currency. 

Every argument employed by Mirabeau, has been repeated in 
a less powerful and less attractive form by the American fanatics. 
Step by step have the American apes played second-hand fiends 
to the arch-infernals of Paris. When the assignats would buy 
nothing and were worth nothing, a new subterfuge was adopted 
to supply the revolution with means to ruin the country. The 
incendiaries issued 600,000,000 of mandats. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 427 

In 179G, they issued 2,400,000,000 more of the same currency 
the mandats followed the assignats in the downward current. 

It is worthy of examination to trace the similarity of purpose 
and action, of the revolutionists of France and America. 

The first measure of each, was confiscation as the basis of secu- 
rity for a circulating medium. 

The French constituent assembly, representing a mere faction 
of the French people under the audacious lead of Mirabeau, 
placed the property of the clergy at the disposal of the State, by 
virtue of the character of the j^roprietors. 

■ The majority of Congress, representing not more than one- 
third of the people of the United States, placed tlie property of 
slaveholders in tiie same condition, because they were slavehold- 
ers by law and inheritance. 

Confiscation works destruction everywhere, and confiscated 
property has never been enjoyed, because the lauds are as worth- 
less for sale as they are dangerous for enjoyment. 

After the failure of the assignats and confiscation, the property 
of emigrants was sequestered to secure the mandats, but added 
notliing to their value. The over issue of money, general inse- 
curity of person, property, and every thing which appealed to 
law for protection, destroyed all values. The extravagant price 
of every thing, the distrust of the producer in the markets, which 
they would gladly have abandoned as places in which they were 
driven to be robbed, alarmed everybody. The speculators aud 
usurers would not permit the wages of labor to keep pace with 
the price of provisions, since this would destroy their schemes of 
plunder. 

Capital always robs labor, for there is nothing else to rob. 

The poor complained of the usurers, the extortioners, and the 
rich. To reduce prices, Marat proposed to multiply the provis- 
ion stores, and at his instigation, the mob was let loose upon the 
markets. Finally, goods were taken without payment, grain 
diminished, prices increased. At length, the Convention adopted 
the Stevens plea of making trading in gold a penal offence. 

Gold dealers were subjected to severe surveillance, much after 
the style of the present system of liquor manufactories, with 
hired spies to watch the business as it transpired before them. 



428 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Each new proposed alleviation proved a new evil. The tax- 
gatherers ate up the taxes, the revenue collectors ate up the reve- 
nue, manufactures ceased work, farms were abandoned, relaxation 
of the revolutionary rigor only hastened the downfall of their 
dynasty, which must soon have died in any event, of its own vio- 
lence and extravagance. The very rigor of the law to sustain 
the assignats, precipitated their destruction. 

After the failure of successive issues, came the forced loans 
from the rich. To such poverty was the country reduced, and 
such was the worthlessness of the assignats, that the government 
enforced the payment of taxes in kind produced on the land. 

The maudats followed the assignats, just as the National Bank 
currency followed the issue of greenbacks. The assignats were 
specially secured, the mandats were secured on the lands gener- 
ally. The mandats soon followed the assignats. The calamities 
of this monstrous financial profligacy produced more wide-spread 
misery, more sudden changes from comfort to poverty, more ini- 
quity in transactions between both individuals and the govern- 
ment, more losses to all persons engaged in every department of 
industry and trade, more discontent, profligacy, disturbance and 
outrage, than the massacre in September, the Avar in L'Vendee, 
the proscriptions in the provinces and all the sanguinary violence 
of the reign of terror. 

This fearful finale of paper money in France, is the legitimate 
result of her profligacy. The American Congress has been the 
exact reflex of the constituent assembly. The gold bill, the le- 
gal tender bill, the gold-bearing bond, was the reproduction of 
French folly and crime, with this one difference : 

That the French fanaticism, somewhat seasoned with justice, 
aimed their blows at despotism; the American fanaticism, direc- 
ted by a reckless dishonesty, struck at republican government, 
and destroyed its Constitution. The French repudiated the as- 
signats, with the crimes which brought them into being; the 
Americans are building the funding system ujion a depreciated 
currency, to fasten slavery upon the industry of the country, to 
transmit to our children that which was before but a temporary 
evil, to be avoided and eschewed. 

Debt is the measure of our personal liberty. Only the Rus- 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 429 

sian aristocracy could enforce the Russian debt. It requires the 
whole force of the monarchy, aristocracy, and monopoly of Great 
Britain, who own the labor and production of the country in 
advance of their creation, to make the British debt available for 
oppression. In America, the question is exceedingly simple, 
the repudiation of this debt, or the abandonment of the republi- 
can system of government. 

The military despotism in the South, is the first step in ad- 
vancing crime to overthrow liberty. A necessary plan to carry 
out the funding system, to collect such a debt, and prepare the 
people of the North to submit to military espionage and posse 
as the accompaniment of their revenue system. 

The Congress has reduced the American people to a choice 
amono; three methods of extrication : 

The first, the British funding system fastened upon us. 

The second, the French paper system of paying with green- 
backs, and the hypothecation of the greenbacks, for the public 
lands, so as to leave no public debt. 

The third is outright repudiation. The first must be destroy- 
ed at all hazards. The second may be done or pave the way for 
the third. The people must be free from the task-masters of 
capital. 



430 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



JBOOJ^ IFIIFTSI- 



CHAPTER I. 

Unhealthy Condition of the Public Mind in Regard to Public 
Assistance. 

The unhealthy condition of the public mind, and 
the business of the country, is the harbinger of gen- 
eral bankruptcy. 

The unsettled, discontented, and feverish state of the public 
mind, is a clear index of our approaching ruin. 

The people of the country are complaining, pleading, and 
regretting, in singular confusion. In appeals to Congress for 
redress, assistance, and prohibition, as the case may be, agricul- 
ture, commerce, and manufactures, send up their committees to 
besiege Congress, call upon the President, and ask relief at the 
hands of the Government. 

Soldiers are praying for more bounty, widows ask an increase 
of pension, free negroes demand more rations, ministers are 
seeking new chaplaincies, members of Congress increase their 
own salaries, and connive at the creation of large standing 
armies, to enlarge the extent and diversity of their patronage. 
These new requirements of the functions of government, make 
new demands upon the public treasury. Heavier taxation, and 
more extensive resources, must be exhausted, to meet the increas- 
ing depletion. 

But you have scarcely caught a passing glimpse of these mul- 
titudes, seeking relief from the treasury, these mendicants upon 
government folly, and crazy, popular liberality, until your atten- 
tion is attracted to other committees, deputed from every other 
conceivable interest, demanding exemption from taxation of 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 431 

every kind. What is scarcely less remarkable than incongru- 
ous, these two classes are met and jostled, by a third, and quite 
as numerous a class, demanding protection for everything they 
create or do. All of these gentlemen maintain their claims, by 
arguments both new and old, extreme and absurd, conclusive and 
ad captandim, the very challenge of Avhich, would invite violence 
from their hands. 

This motley mob of instructors in political economy, are more 
than outdone by the philosophers who propose the introduction 
of new systems of moral and political truth for the govern- 
ment of the world. 

The humble minister of the meek and lowly Son of IMan, ar- 
rayed in the latest and most fashionable style of the elite, with 
diamond rings, and French broadcloth coat, and silk velvet vest, 
imperial and moustache highly perfumed with musk, comes to 
exemplify his peaceful mission, by a demand, in the name of 
Heaven, of a revival of war, as the only means of propitiating 
the good will, and securing the favor, of the Prince of Peace ; 
and persistently demand violence as the only efficient means of 
showing the merciful character of their divine mission. Their 
cry for blood is to exemplify their devotion to the great Master 
who never resented an injury ; and their vengeful addresses are 
given in proof of their forgiving spirit. 

The New England Puritan, with his whining cant and nasal 
twang, next approaches upon his philanthropic mission of levy- 
ing an impost duty, of an hundred per cent, upon the original 
cost of the cloth of the poor man's wardrobe. He comes in 
this political tableaux, as the friend of our common race, and 
piteously pleads for the amelioration of the wrongs of mankind, 
W'hich, he is religiously persuaded, \vill be best subserved by 
paying three prices, and a reasonable profit, for Ids goods and 
wares. 

Next approaches the friend of universal suffrage, v/ho proposes 
to extend the rights of self-government, by disfranchising all of 
the civilized elements of society, and enfranchisingb arbarians, 
as the most ready means of paying the public debt, in this most 
striking, common-sense way ; by levying taxes, without the con- 
sent of the people who shall pay them, and depriving the owners 
of property of the power of resisting their collection. 



432 CEIDIES OF THE CIYEL WAB,. 

This insanity which pervades society, in regard to the public 
debt, is precisely that which seizes every insolvent debtor. Ambi- 
tious to be rich, and careful to conceal his misfortune, he resorts 
to every possible scheme, and embraces every subterfuge which 
offers relief; but with that fatuity which involved him, he will 
pursue his shadows until they disappear in the setting sun of his 
gloomy life. Governments are multitudes of men who have 
combined their powers, and wealth, and folly, and insanity, — dif- 
ferent from individuals only in their magnitude. 

The great financial calamity of the United States is, that we 
are in debt, without adequate means of payment. Every other 
obstacle, in the way of our progress, power, and glory, is magni- 
fied by this cardinal evil. 

Every subterfuge of speculation, every refuge of lies, has been 
exhausted to make our j)overty seem wealth, and our blanched 
cheek of shame wear the face of honor. The last miserable sh ift of 
these commercial simpletons, is to pay the debt by a constitutional 
amendment, embracing the views of the gentlemen above alluded 
to ; then to secure the payment, more completely, by passing laws, 
from time to time, that the public debt never shall be repudiated. 

There is nothing more ridiculous than an attempt to enact 
laws which may never be repealed. Such attempts always cast 
a just suspicion upon the law itself, which claims immunity from 
examination. Such laws inevitably lead to oppression, which 
will seek freedom in revolution. A government which enforces 
only such laws as may serve the purpose of tyrants, and obliviates 
such as are necessary to preserve liberty, is unspeakeably worse 
than simple arbitrary power, and will command no more respect 
than that which is extorted by force. Of this character, are all 
laws which repudiate one class of debts outright, and make ob- 
ligatory forever another class, based upon the same general 
principles, when the justice and obligation of each arc in the 
nature of things subject to the judgment of each successive gen- 
eration. 

Forever, at the most moderate calculation, is a long time hence, 
and must see many changes in its checquered course. Wise men 
are content to legislate for to-day, whilst the prudent as wisely 
care for the morrow. God alone is the lawgiver of eternity. 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAE. 433 



THE UNCERTAIN CHARACTER OF THIS DEBT. 

This great debt is a purely human affair, not invested with a 
single attribute of Divinity, and must be subjected to all of the 
examinations, criticisms, disputations, and legal ordeals pe- 
culiar to all other mere indebtedness, and it must not be for- 
gotten that it is not a part of the history of the world, that man- 
kind grow impatient for opportunities to pay public debts. 
Senator Sumner once declared that his " people were clamoring 
for heavier taxation," and were indignant because they were not 
permitted to contribute more freely of their money to the sup- 
port of the Government. I confess frankly that I never knew 
just such a case. 

The railroad system of the country has given a wide scope to 
the passion for indebtedness, peculiar to the American people, 
and illustrates their anxieties to meet claims incurred by stock- 
gambling. The multiplicity of claims and law-suits consequent, 
are a striking commentary upon the desire of the people to pay 
public debts without cavil. There is scarcely an instance of 
railroad obligations ^having been met without contest and resist- 
ance. The simple history of these contests makes a large acqui- 
sition to the legal literature of the country, and nothing but the 
living, active power, and permeating identity, of railroads with 
the necessary business of the country, enables them to secure the 
recognition of debts fairly contracted with communities and 
States. The voluntary subscriptions to great public enterprises 
are rarely realized to the amount of fifty per cent. 

The debt of the United States, whether in bonds as the foun- 
dation of a hateful aristocracy, or in banks, the engine of per- 
petual illegitimate speculation, will ultimately be contested before 
the highest tribunals knov/n to the contests of time — the frail, 
fickle, treacherous court of popular will — yet only less potent 
than the decrees of the HIGH CHANCERY ABOVE. 

When the issues in the debt are fully made out, every step of 
the dangerous road through which we have passed, will be ex- 
amined with a care which shall make men dizzy in contempla- 
tion of the chasms beneath, and the fearful, crumbling precipices 
'28 



434 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

along the tottering edges of which a drunken nation has stag- 
gered, and reeled, singing her bacchanalian songs, leaving sepul- 
chres of the immortal dead, churches of the living God, gardens, 
cities, and plantations, the discoveries of science, the works of 
art, and the monuments of religion, in ashes, as the only land- 
marks by which their hateful march can be retraced. This is 
all that M'ill remain of a cultivated refinement and peerless civil- 
ization. 

The constitutionality of the purposes for which appropriations 
were made, and the consequent debts contracted, will be 
carefully examined, if not before, will, after the furious fires of 
passion have died out, and the bitterness of strife has been dissi- 
pated in the changes of time. 

The contest will involve everything at every step of time. A 
national debt, standing on the rails of the track of the advancing 
destiny of a great country, — a millstone hanging around the 
neck of labor, — an impassable gulf, with its boiling maelstrom 
lying between and separating the fortunes of the rich from the 
daily wants of the poor, — a treasure from which bribery draws 
her legislative poison, and corrupts the fountains of justice. 

This debt is a stream of power, which accumulates as it sweeps 
swiftly on, increasing in volume, to the vast sea of the future. 

This financial despotism on the one side has arrayed its pla- 
toons, companies, battalions, regiments and grand army of asses- 
sors, collectors, and spies, to possess the property and discover 
the liberty of the people. Against them, on the other side, are 
the people, "who array their forces. 

The eighteen hundred thousand citizens who refused to vote 
for Abraham Lincoln, in A. D. 1864. 

The Avholc Southern people who resisted his usurpation with 
arms. 

The millions of poor people who have been ruined by the war. 

The soldiers, and their ruined families, who have nothing left 
of their meagre savings, and grow restive in contemplation of 
the fortunes of contractors, and speculators, coined from the 
blood of their fallen comrades. 

The landholder, and every man who contributes to the sup- 
port of the special, privileged, untaxed, and untitled bonded 
aristocracy. These are the parties to the great contest. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 435 

When the issue is flilrly made up, the trial will be short, speedy, 
and decisive. In this terrible conflict, the empty clamor of " loyal- 
ty," the clap-trap of " national life," will pass away with their 
concomitant slang phrases. Of all these evanescent things, the 
people will grow weary, and time will administer her own reme- 
dy. Debts are not the more enduring, because the more costly 
luxuries of party organization. 

In this struggle for liberty, there will be a thorough canvass ; 
the poAver of the legislation which proposes to fasten the yoke 
upon the necks of an unwilling people as an a^jpendage, if not 
an ornament, to their existence. 



436 cr.iMES OF the civil war. 



CHAPTER II. 

Prevailing Ignorance of the Nature of Tariffs. 

Exorbitant duties levied upon importations of every lund, 
is the natural result of a debt which involves the country in 
bankruptcy. This is not an accident merely of the indebtedness, 
but was clearly foreseen, and as certainly intended, by the pro- 
jectors of the present revolution, as one of its immediate and 
necessary results. 

The necessity for a protective system of duties was, in itself, 
worth the price of a million of lives to those who were profit- 
ably bartering in human blood, and was cheaply purchased by 
the desolation of half a continent, to those who were stealing 
what had escaped the general conflagration. 

One class of people claim the right of living by their wits. 
This they attempted, not in the manly struggle of mind with 
mind, in the learned professions, in the invention of new and 
useful implements of labor, in the discoveries of new truths of 
nature, new principles in science, or new doctrines in philoso- 
phy ; but the protection of their particular business in which 
government is laid under requisition for their support. The 
extent of the vassalage of the laboring classes of the United 
States to vicious legislation, exceeds anything known in the his- 
tory of the commerce and industry of nations. The most de- 
plorable feature of this system of oppression is, that those Avho 
suffer under it seem unconscious of the weight of the burdens 
imposed, and are continually attributing the evil to other inade- 
quate causes. 

They are sinking under the load, yet scarcely discern the un- 
pitying hand that presses liarder and harder each succeeding 
year, adding new tasks of labor to meet the old demands of 
life, and each year falling shorter than the year preceding, of its 
comforts. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 437 

Tiie unseen tyrant has adroitly placed some other image be- 
tween himself and his victim, to receive the blows in revenge for 
the injuries inflicted. 

The laborer has felt the pinchings of want, the gnawings of 
hunger, and the piercing winds against which he had no ade- 
quate protection. He cast his eye in every direction, but could 
discern no sufficient cause for the destitution, and want, that met 
him at his door-sill when he returned half famished from his 
daily labor, without being able to economize for the evening of 
life or those days of sorrow, when ill health or accident, would 
commence to devour the penny saved to alleviate the sufferings 
of old age. Just at this moment the cunning capitalist would 
point him to the people of the Southern States, and denounce 
their prosperity as the secret cause of the poverty of the North- 
ern laborer. 

The laborer who overlooked his plunderer in the person who 
addressed him, commenced a crusade against the people of the 
South as his worst enemy, who stood between him and his wont- 
ed happiness. The long sanguinary civil war ensued, and with 
its termination came the destruction of our market; the annihil- 
ation of our foreign exchange, and in their stead arose our great 
competitor in the market of the world. 

Here is the real source of general poverty which demands re- 
lief. 

The measure of the financial oppression- of any people, is the 
taxes imposed upon their property, and drawbacks upon their 
industry. It is the chief aim of intriguers, in the affairs of 
government and finances, to keep the taxation of the people out 
of view. 

The discovery was made at an early period of civilization, 
that oppressive taxation was the never failing source of revolu- 
tion. It was the greatest improvement in the art of govern- 
ment, to learn how to tax men without their knowledge, and he 
was the ablest statesman who could extract most from the pro- 
ducino- classes without complaint, and collect the money before 
it entered the purse of the tax-payer. This occult science was 
called " Duties:' 

The very general ignorance of the people, of the nature, oppres- 



438 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

slon, and extent of the system of duties in the United States, 
should not excite surprise, when it is known that this want of 
knowledge pervades the ruling elements of the country, and is 
conmion among her leading statesmen. President Lincoln, in 
the route from his home in Springfield, Illinois, to Washington 
city, delivered, in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the great Western 
emporium of manufactures, the following vague, incoherent, and 
extraordinary speech about this question, which had involved 
the controversies of the Senate from the foundation of the gov- 
ernment, and touching the sources of nearly all of the revenue 
which had supported its administration and paid its public debt. 
Hear him: — "It is often said that the specialty of Pennsylva- 
nia assuming that direct taxation is not to be adopted^ the tariff 
question must be as durable as the government itself. 

It is a question of national housekeeping. It is to the gov- 
ernment what replenishing the meal-tub is to the family — ever 
varying circumstances will require frequent modifications as to 
amount needed and sources of supply : so tar, then, there is little 
difference of opinion among the people. It is as to whether, and 
how far duties on imports shall be adjusted to favor home pro- 
ductions. In the home market the controversy begins. 

One party insists that such adjustment oppresses one class for 
the advantage of another; while the other party argues that with 
its incidents and in the long run, all classes are benefited. In 
the Cliicago platform there is a plank upon this subject, which 
should be a general law to the incoming administration. We 
should do neither more nor less, than we gave the people reason 
to believe we would, when they gave us their votes. 

The plank is as I now read : 

Mesolved, That while providing revenue for the support of the 
general government, by duties upon imjwrts, sound policy re- 
quires such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the 
development of the industrial interests of the whole country ; 
and we commend that policy of national exchanges, which se- 
cures to the working men liberal wages, to agriculture remune- 
rative prices, to meclianics and manufacturers an adequate re- 
ward for their skill, labor, and enterprize, and to the nation, com- 
mercial prosperity and independence. 

As with all general propositions, there will be shades of dif- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL. WAH. 439 

ference in construing this. I have by no means a thoron<^lily 
matured judgment upon this subject, especially as to details, some 
ideas are all." 

Tlie tariff, under the pretext of protecting manufactures, has 
been an instrument in the hands of the rich to oppress the poor. 
It is a decree passed to limit the amount and quality of the food 
and raiment of the consumer, for the benefit of the producer. 
The extent and atrocity of our taxation defies comment. It has 
placed over us an army of spies, detectives, contractors, general 
and subordinate officers, who meet us at every corner of the 
streets and in every avenue of business. 

Placing a money-grabber between the mouths of the poor and 
the butcher-shop, a stamp between the medicine and your dying 
child, a tariff between your shivering body and the clothing-store, 
between the muslin shroud and the corpse of your wife. 

What is a Duty? A protective duty upon importations, is 
a tax levied upon the consumer and paid to the producer, to main- 
tain manufactures, under the pretext that manufacturing is not 
able to sustain itself. It is more ; it is a restriction laid upon 
commerce, which is intended to destroy the communication be- 
tween powers for the exchange of such articles as may be manu- 
factured in their respective nations. 

What is Commerce? Commerce is not only as McCulloh 
defines it, " coeval with the first dawn of civilization," but it is 
the prime civilizer of the world and the great medium through 
which the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life, are extended 
to the whole family of man, by reciprocal exchange with those 
Avho, having one or more articles in greater quantities than they 
can consume, exchange them with other jiersous, who, in like 
quantities, have other and different commodities. It is in these 
mutual exchanges, that the business of the world is created and 
enlaro-ed ; and by commerce, that multifarious wealth is found 
in modern times, so generally and equally distributed among 
civilized nations. 

Commerce is a source of Avealth, which adds that which is im- 
ported to the original and created wealth of the country, which 
is thereby the richer by the importation ; and exports those sur- 
plus commodities, which the people can dispense with as well, 



440 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

and thus, whilst increasing the variety and extent of the com- 
forts and luxuries of a nation, dispenses in return to other nations 
an equivalent for their productions, and a variety of the blessings, 
which God has kindly intended for all. That people are placed 
within the reach of the greatest variety of the products of the 
earth, who have the most perfect system of commerce. 

And he is an enemy of civilization who obstructs commerce 
and restricts trade. 

So tenaciously do men cling to their selfish barbarism, that they 
have yielded to the freedom of trade with as much reluctance as 
tyrants have conceded the rights of representation, the writ of 
right, or the supremacy of the civil over the military power. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 441 



CHAPTER III. 

Devices to Obstruct Trade. 

Human ingenuity has never been more severely taxed than in 
tlie effort to find out some new metliod of restricting: trade, for 
the benefit of those already engaged in particular pursuits. 

These restrictions may be curiously summed up as a system in 
itself, which has been in operation to restrain competition, lest 
freedom might endanger the interests of monopoly. 

I. The exclusive privileges of corporations, which overshadow 
the business of the towns and villages, roots out the individual 
efforts of the mechanic, who endeavors to carry on his trade sin- 
gle-handed. In Great Britain this was done. 

1. By restricting the number of apprentices to an exceedingly 
small proportion of those who might profitably be engaged in 
the business. 

2. By extending the term of service of apprenticeship, to a 
length which forbids entrance by those who would desire to learn 
such trades, or engage in such business. Working the double 
hardship of preventing young men from engaging in businesses for 
which nature had given them both taste and capacities, and the 
people from having the advantage of healthy competition. 

The number of years required, were such as forced the appren- 
tice to forego the advantages of a liberal education in early life, 
or employ his maturer years, almost the length of time necessary 
to earn a competency at any of the pursuits of the artizan, which 
was untrammeled by conditions; whilst a master who kept 
more than a given number of apprentices, was laid under penal- 
ties as great as those imposed uj^on men for the commission of 
crime of the lower grade, with which it is classed, by laws 
still in force, in enlightened countries of Europe. 

3. The restriction was so framed, that neither the customer 



442 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

could choose his workman, nor the workman follow his occupa- 
tion, lest some incorporated monopoly should lose the profits se- 
cured to it. 

All of this was entirely unknown to tlie ancients, who had no 
apprentices. It is the invention of monopoly, made to perpetuate 
itself by law. 

This, too, is in violation of the laws of industry, which require 
due stimulants, and secures no better workmanship, which de- 
pends upon the skill of the master of the shop, who is stimulated 
to perfection and integrity of his work, by the continuation of his 
business, and the customers who support it. 

4. The unvv'illingness to impart the knowledge and advantages 
of trade, is another mode resorted to, and somewhat modified by 
the laws granting letters patent for a limited term of years, 
which generally remunerates the inventor in a fair proportion, 
according to the appreciated value of his inventive genius, and 
may scarcely be regarded as an obstruction to trade; whilst the 
others enumerated, not only obstruct the business itself, but also 
hinder its free circulation, and invade the law of supply and de- 
mand, and stand in the way of the progressive development of a 
true and liberal civilization. 

In 1601, Queen Elizabeth had granted letters patent, Avith 
exclusive privileges, to some private persons, for the sale of cer- 
tain commodities. 

The Queen learned, through the Commons, that these monop- 
olies were exercised as so many breaches of the people's privi- 
leges, and annulled them, for the most part, leaving the remainder 
to the courts ; whereupon the Commons deputed eighty of their 
number to wait upon her with their thanks, whereupon she made 
the following speech : 

" I owe you hearty thanks and commendations for your singular 
good will towards me, not only in your hearts and thoughts, 
but which you have openly expressed and declared, whereby you 
have recalled me from an error proceeding from my ignorance, 
not my will. These things had, undeservedly, turned to my 
disgrace (to whom nothing is more dear than the safety and love 
of my people), had not such harpies and horse-leeches as these, 
been made known and discovered to me, by you. I had rather 
my heart and hand should perish, than that either my heart or 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 443 

hand sliould allow such privileges, to monopolists, as may be 
prejudicial to my people. The splendor of Kegal Majesty hath 
not so blinded mine eyes, that licentious power should prevail with 
me more than justice. The glory of the name of a king may 
deceive princes, as gilded pills may deceive a rich patient, but I am 
none of those princes: for I know that the commonwealth is to be 
governed for the good and advantage of those tiiat are committed to 
me, not of myself io whom it is entrusted, and that an account is, 
one day, to be given betore another judgfnent-scat. I think myself 
most happy that, by God's assistance, I have hitherto so prosper- 
ously governed tlie commonwealth, in all respects, and that I have 
had such subjects as, for their good, I would willingly leave 
both kingdom, and life, also. I beseech you that, whatever mis- 
demeanors and miscarriages others are guilty of, by their false 
suggestions, may not be imputed to me. Let the testimony of a 
clear conscience, entirely, in all respects, excuse me. You are not 
ignorant that princes' servants are oftentimes too much set upon 
their own private advantages, that the truth is frequently con- 
cealed from princes, and they cannot themselves look narrowly in 
all things, upon Avhose shoulders lieth continually the heavy 
weight of the greatest and most important affairs." 

5th. The laws which prevented workmen from combinino- to 
exact greater wages under heavy penalties, yet did not prevent 
the masters and corporation from combining to exact more work 
and less compensation. Such was the character of the 8th stat- 
ute of George III. 

6th. The regulation of prices by law in favor of the manu- 
facturer. Now there can be no doubt that when a corporation 
receives its franchises and exclusive privileges from government, 
that the government not only has the right, but it is their 
bounuen duty to restrain the powers which they have granted, 
that the public may not be oi)pressed by a franchise granted by 
itself. 

So various and absurd have been the subterfuges to which 
monopolists, hard pressed, have resorted to perpetuate their 
power and cover up their frauds, that the barest recital would 
fill many volumes. It is with the principal and most enormous 
of these which I have now to deal, because it is the nakedest apology 
made by the rich to invoke legislative aid to oppress the poor. 
It is the hollowest appeal for a franchise of the powerful, to 



444 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

crush out the weak ; the right of the well-dressed to pluck the 
tattered garments from the poorly clad; the right of the land- 
lord to grind the tenant; the privilege of the coal dealer to 
freeze the shivering body of the fireless. ~ 

" Tariff in its most comprehensive sense is a table alphabeti- 
cally arranged, specifying the various duties, drawbacks, bounties, 
&c., charged and allowed on the importation and exportation of 
articles of foreign and domestic produce." 

THE ODIOUS OBSTRUCTION TO AMERICAN COMMERCE IS THE 
DUTY UPON FOREIGN IMPORTS. 

There is In the weakness of human nature an inherent love of 
self-deception, which bears us unconsciously away upon the 
swelling tide of sure destruction, when, under the delusion that 
we are floating upon the unbroken waves of prosperity to cer- 
tain bliss. This hallucination approaches a frenzy when it 
seizes men laboring under the excitements peculiar to religion or 
politics, when led by artful and ambitious men, under the trans- 
parent guise of patriotism or piety, as the vilest imposters find 
the most ready access to the hearts of honest men by extrava- 
gant professions of devotion to their country and God. 

This very delusion has, strangely enough, taken possession of 
Americans in the consideration of every thing Avhich pertains to 
their government, and beclouded their understanding upon every 
subject of public economy. Men who complain of taxes which 
they fully comprehend, are fascinated and delighted with the 
idea of supporting the government by tariffs ten-fold more ex- 
pensive and a thousand times more odious, which take their 
property without their knowledge. 



CHIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 445 



CHAPTER IV. 

No One Nation can Produce Everything. 

No OXE NATION CAN PRODUCE EVERYTHING WHICH IT CON- 
SUMES, WITHOUT DENYING TO ITS POPULATION MUCH THAT 
THE ARTS OF CIVILIZATION COULD SUPPLY THEM WITH, IN 
EXCHANGE FOR THE SURPLUS WHICH THEY PRODUCE AT 
HOME. 

In support of this view I again call in the American philoso- 
pher, who says, " Several of the princes of Europe have, of late, 
from an opinion of advantage to arise by producing all com- 
modities and manufactures within their own dominion, so as to 
diminish or render useless their importations, endeavor to entice 
workmen from other countries by high salaries, privileges, &c., 
j)retending to be skilled in various great manufactures. 

Jmagiuing that America must be in want of them, and the 
Congress would probably be disposed to imitate the 25i"inces 
above mentioned, have proposed to go over on condition of hav- 
ing their passage paid, lands given, salaries appointed, exclusive 
privileges for terms of years. Such persons, on reading the Ar- 
ticles of Confederation, will find that Congress has no power 
committed to them, nor money put into their hands, for such 
purposes, and that if any encouragement be given, it must be by 
the government of some separate State. This, however, has 
been rarely done in America, and when it has been done, it has 
rarely succeeded so as to establish a manufacture, which the 
country was not so ripe for, as to encourage ^^rivate persons to 
set it up, labor being generally too dear there, and hands diffi- 
cult to be kept together, every one desiring to be master, and the 
cheapness of the land inclining many to leave trade for agricul- 
ture. Some, indeed, have met with success, and are carried on 
to advantage, but they are such as require only a few hands, or 
wherein great part of the work is performed by machines. 



446 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Goods tliat are bulky, and of so small value as not to veil bear 
the expense of freight, may often be made cheaper in the country 
than they can be imported, and the manufacture of such goods 
will be profitable whenever there is sufficient demand. The 
farmers of America produce, indeed, a great deal of wool and 
flax, and none is exported ; it is all worked up ; but it is in the 
way of domestic manufacture. The buying up of quantities of 
wool and flax, with the design to employ spinners, weavers, etc., 
and from great establishments producing quantities of linen and 
woolen goods for sale, has been several times attempted in differ- 
ent provinces, but those projects have generally failed, goods of 
equal value being imported cheaper; and when the government 
has been solicited to support such schemes by encouragement in 
monc}', or by imposing duties on importations of such goods, 
it has been generally refused, upon this principle, that if the 
country is ripe for manufacture, it may be carried on by private 
persons to advantage ; and if not, its great establishments of 
manufacture require great number^ of poor to do the work, for 
small wages. Those poor are found in Europe, but will not be 
found in America, till the lands were all taken up and cultiva- 
ted ; and the excess of the people who cannot get land, want em- 
ployment. The manufacture of silk, they say, is natural in 
France, as that of cloth is in England, because each country pro- 
d uces in plenty the first materials ; but if England will have a man- 
ufactory of silk as well as that of cloth, and France that of cloth 
as well as that of silk, these unnatural operations must be sup- 
ported by mutual prohibitions, or high duties on the importa- 
tions of each other's goods, — by which means the workmen are 
enabled to tax the home consumer by greater prices, while the 
wages they receive, make them neither happier nor richer, since 
they only drink more and work less; therefore the governments 
in America do nothing to encourage such projects." 

At the time of this writing, Dr. Franklin was engaged in 
stirring up a rebellion which startled the world, and gave being 
to a new and unique system of government, by making war 
against a most trifling tea tax and insignificant stamp duties, 
just as the French afterwards rebelled against the salt tax, and 
every spirited people have resisted, and will ultimately triumph, 
over petty tyranny. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 447 



CHAPTER V. 

The Two Principles in Favor of a Protective Tariff Contradicted 

Each Other. 

The theory of a protective tariif rests upon the two following 
propositions with others deducible from them, which contradict 
each other : 

I. That a high duty protects the home manufacturer, by pre- 
venting the importation of foreign goods. 

II. That a high duty is the best and only means of creating 
a revenue for the support of the government. 

Tariffs bring revenue to the government, by collecting it of 
importations ; tariffs do not, — therefore, prohibit, — but invite, im- 
portations as the successful means of raising revenue. If, to 
protect the manufacturer, upon the other hand, a tariff' prohibits 
importation, it does not, therefore, create a revenue. 

The whole system is a fraud upon labor, and an obstruction 
to commerce. 

The Protectionists assume two facts fatal to their theory 
among; civilized nations. 

First, that every nation owes its prosperity to non-purchase of 
other nations, and manufacture everything, not only that for 
which nature has given them capacity, but everything which by 
the most absurd and oppressive aid, the government may assist 
them to manufacture. 

In brief, they propose a non-intercourse with the highly-civ- 
ilized kingdoms of the earth, as exclusive as the Chinese in 
everything, but the wall which surrounds the Celestial Empire. 

The second fact assumed in support of the first, is, that man- 
ufactures, and not commerce, build up and enrich a country. 

History, however otherwise in conflict, sustains the fact that 
agriculture builds up commerce, and prohibitory tariffs of duties 
upon foreign imports, destroy both. 



448 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

This view is sustained by Doctor Franklin, the most profound 
of all of our political philosophers, a Doctor of Laws when that 
proud title was conferred by St. Andrew's and Oxford only upon 
those to whom honors were due, when refused to princes of the 
royal blood, and long before it was bandied about in reciprocal 
compliments, or paid out as so much stock in trade in the com- 
merce of corruption. A law-giving economist, who will be re- 
cognized as authority everywhere, he was the cotemporary and 
friend of Adam Smith, Hume, Burke, Fox, Chatham, and his 
remarkable son, William Pitt, and the associate of all of the great- 
est men of the eighteenth century in Europe and America, and 
was inferior to none of his associates. He lived through the 
most wonderful period of the Christian era, in which political 
truths were discussed with unbridled freedom, and political sys- 
tems sprung from the inventive brains of the most illustrious of 
the heroes and ablest statesmen who ever spoke, or wrote, or 
thought in the English language. In a letter to a French gen- 
tleman, he says ; 

"We are much pleased with the disposition of your Govern- 
ment to favour commerce manifested in the late Reglement. 
You appear to be possessed of a truth which few governments 
are possessed of. That A must take some of B's produce, other- 
wise B will not be able to pay for that he would take of A." 

In regard to protection in England, he says : 

" We see much in Parliamentary proceedings, and in pamph- 
lets and papers, of the injury, of the concessions to Ireland, will 
do to the manufactures of England, while the people of England 
seem to be quite forgotten, as if quite out of the question. If 
the Irish can manufacture cottons, and stufls, and silks, and lin- 
ens, and cutlery, and toys, and books, &c., &c., so as to sell them 
cheaper in England than the manufacturers of England sell 
them, is this not good for the people of England who are not 
manufacturers? And will not even the manufacturers them- 
selves share the benefit? Since, if cottons are cheaper, all of the 
other manufacturers who wear cottons will save in that article, 
and so with all of the rest." 

It may be justly added, that no better evidence of this simple 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 449 

truth need be adduced, than the practice that each manufacturer, 
without the slightest regard to the question of protection of his 
neighboring manufacturer, buys stuffs wherever they may be 
bought cheapest. And it is a marvellous commentary upon the 
present Congress and its irrational legislation, that they are 
adorning their Halls with foreign furniture, and treading foreign 
carpets beneath their feet, and wrapping foreign broadcloths 
about their persons. 



29 



450 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Tariff Rests Upon Endless Contradiction. 

The Protective Tariff assumes that everything should be 
manufactured at home, to give employment to labor — that labor- 
ers are idle. 

In the very next breath, it assumes that the reason why we 
need a duty on goods, is, that the labor is so scarce and wages 
are so high, that we cannot compete with foreign manufoctures. 
The whole system rests on a sophism. The farmer wants fish, 
but has not the time to fish, has no water to fish in, and no nets 
to fish with. But the fisherman has all of these. The farmer 
plows lands for cotton, corn, or wheat, and catches his fish in that 
way without risk, and the fisherman raised his cotton, Avheat, or 
corn, with the net. 

If the farmer had gone fishing, he might have given tliat par- 
ticular employment to himself and others ; but, instead of this, 
the same amount of labor was employed by fishermen, and the 
farmer got his fish whilst he employed his labor in raising pro- 
vision from the soil, and the fisherman gets his provision by 
catch incr fish. 

The great argument for protection or prohibition, that it is 
wrong to pi'efer foreign manufactures to our own, might be just, 
but is inapplicable. 

If the foreigner buys our oils and cotton in exchange, then 
our production is his production, and his production is our pro- 
duction. AVe produce his manufacture with our oil and cotton, 
and he produces our oil and cotton with his manufactures, as 
clearly as though each wrought with his respective implements 
of labor. 

This law is one which regulates itself with great care and pro- 
priety ; for, when we can raise nothing to sell, we cease buying ; 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 451 

but when did any industrious people become so reduced? Un- 
der the tariff system, the poor are paying one hundred per cent, 
upon the necessaries of life, thereby reducing them to starvation ; 
and at the same time, the Governor of Massachusetts is trans- 
porting the surplus female population to distant lands, under 
pretence that they are unable to maintain themselves. 

The protectionists complain, that manufactured goods sell too 
cheap ; but who ever heard a buyer complain that what he bought 
was too cheap? There can be no other possible use of manu- 
factories to any country, than to afford cheap goods for the people. 
They ought to exist for the benefit of the people, and not for 
their oppression. The friends of high duties declare that by 
protection, our manufactories can successfully enter into compe- 
tition with foreign manufacturers, but this is manifestly untrue. 

If our manufactures can compete with foreign markets, after 
the duties which they must pay in foreign ports, how much more 
easily may they undersell them where they pay no duty. If 
this argument in favor of the tariffs were true, it destroys the 
main one, which demands protection against foreign competition. 

Tariff duties are simply a tax levied upon poor people be- 
cause they are poor, to prevent them from having all that they 
need to eat, and wear, and warm themselves with. The manner 
in which the injustice works is apparent. A is a poor man, 
and wants a suit of plain clothes, on which he has to pay a tariff 
of one hundred per cent. He complains that a suit worth 
twenty-five dollars should cost him fifty dollars. But he is in- 
formed that B is engaged in manufacturing, and unless he gets 
protection by a tariff, the British will be able to undersell him 
in his own market, and moreover, that the Government needs 
tariffs to pay its necessary current expenses. 

Now it happens that B and the English merchant, come to the 
market together Avith goods at equal first cost. A could buy his 
suit of the Englishman at twenty-five dollars and the tariff, 
which makes fifty dollars. But A buys the suit of B for forty- 
nine dollars and fifty cents. In other words, the poor laboring 
man pays twenty-four dollars and fifty cents to the rich manu- 
facturer, who has cleared one hundred and thirty per cent., prov- 
ing tiiat he needed no protection upon the one hand, and the 
Government receives no revenue upon the other hand. 



452 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

Daniel Webster, in his great speech of 1824, thus argues this 
question : 

" Gentlemen tell us they are in favor of domestic industry. 
So am I. They would give it protection. So would I. But 
then, all domestic industry is not confined to manufactures. The 
employment of agriculture, commerce, and navigation, are all 
branches of the same American industry. They all furnish em- 
ployment for American capital and American labor. And when 
the question is, whether these duties shall be laid for the purpose 
of giving further encouragement to particular manufactures, 
ev^ery reasonable man must ask himself, both, whether the pro- 
posed new encouragement be necessary, and whether it can be 
given without injustice to other branches of industry." 

Trying our manufacturers by this rule, they have no right to 
expect further protection, but the people have a right to demand 
a reduction. There is one kind of protection which may not be so 
objectionable in free governments, that duty which may be collected 
of foreigners, and, at the same time, in no wise tax our own people. 
If you can conceive of such an one, you have a fair idea of an im- 
partial tariff for the protection of manufacturers, which, I frankly 
confess, I have not. But, allowing the justice of the principle 
of protection for the purpose of building up manufacturers, 
there is only one way of doing it. That is by paying a direct 
bounty to them, for the erection of manufactures, as we have 
been doing to keep up New England fisheries. This method 
has this advantage over the other methods, that we then know 
precisely wdiat we are paying, v.diere it goes, how it goes^ who 
gives it, and who gets it. 

But, if it were right to protect capital against labor, Avhy would 
it not be just, upon the same principle, to protect labor against 
capital. If it were right to prohibit the importation of foreign 
goods, because they are in competition with domestic manufactures, 
then it would be right to prohibit foreign emigration, because it 
cheapens American labor. These doctrines are both wrong, but 
a protective tariff is the exact and consistent counterpart of Know- 
Nothingism. There can be no possible reason for the one which 
would not well sustain the other. There is a heartless cruelty 
in this style of legislation, that shocks the moral sense. Can 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL "WAR. 453 

there be a more pitiable spectacle upon earth, than to see thous- 
ands of poor people, shivering with cokl, and crowding around 
a half-fed fire, foi'ced to pay more than fifty per cent, duty, to 
the coal monopolists, wlien the very earth is filled with coal? 
This is a duty paid by the destitute to the speculator, who has 
the monopoly of the richest gifts of heaven. It would contrib- 
ute infinitely more to the wealth of the country, and the happi- 
ness of the poor, for the government, under restrictions, to pur- 
chase coal lands for the use of the poor, for, next to water, it is 
the most pressing necessity of life, for which there can be no 
possible substitute. But this legislative cruelty extends to every 
thing which sustains the poor, as the following carefully prepared 
Table exhibits : 



THE TARIFF SWINDLER HOW CONSUMERS ARE LEGALLY 

ROBBED COST OF PRINCIPAL ARTICLES OF CONSUMP- 
TION AVITH OR WITHOUT A TARIFF. 

Value -without A ;«V of A mi f>rem A mt tariff' Whole cost 

tariff at port tariff in oil. gold on paper to our 

N. Y. gold. pd. as tar. cur. jnercVts. 

Tea per lb $1.00.... 35 17.... 52 $1.52 

Pepper " 20.... 17 8,... 25 45 

'' " 20.... 52 23.,.. 75 95 

Tobacco " 10... 51 23.... 74 84 

Coffee " 16.... 6* 3.... 9^ 25i 

Nails per 100 lbs 2.50. ...$1.75 80. ...$2.55.'.... 5.05 

Iron 2.50.... 1.12 40.... 1.62 4.12 

TracechainsprlOOlbs. 8.00.... 3.30 1.50.... 4.80 12.80 

Stoves " ... 3.00.... 1.80 80.... 2.60 5.61 

Sugar 6.00.... 4.60 2.07.... 6.67 12.67 

Salt per bbl 1.50.... 87 38.... 1.25 2.75 

Brandy per gal 2.00.... 2.70 1.21.... 3.91 5.91 

Wine per doz. bottles. 6.00.... 6.00 3.00.... 9.60 15.60 

Handsaw 1.00.... 48 20.... 68.. .. 1.68 

Cigars per 100 2.00.... 92 41.... 1.33 3.38 

'' " 4.00.... 2.60 1.17.... 2.77 7.77 

Three-ply carpet pr yd. 80.... 48 21.... 69 1.49 

Broadcloth per vd 4.00.... 2.40 1.08.... 3.48 7.48 

Calico '' ..... 20.... 91-... 4.... 13.^... 33* 

" " 15.... 3|... 3|.. 12^.... 27" 



454 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



COST OF AN ORDINARY SUIT OF CLOTHES FOR A LABORING 
MAN, WITH AND WITHOUT A TARIFF. 





Value 
iuN.Y. 


Merck's 

profit of 

33 >i cts. 


Cost 

with no 

tariff. 


Whole 
am't of 
tar.ffut 

sold. 


Prem. A d'tion'l Profit 

on cost to of 
sold, vierch'ts. mcrcht's 




Wool hat.. 


.$1.00., 


,. 33.. 


.$1.33.. 


. 57... 


25.. 82... L7. 


.$2.43 


Undershirt. 


,. 1.00. 


.. 33.. 


. 1.33., 


, 50... 


22.. 72... 24. 


. 2.40 


Coat 


. 8.00., 


..2.66.. 


.10.66.. 


, 4.75.. 


2.03.6.78. ..2. 25., 


.19.70 


Shirt 


, 1.50.. 


. 50.. 


. 2.00.. 


75. 


33.1.08... 35.. 


, 3.45 


Pants 


. 3.00.. 


. 1.00.. 


. 4.00.. 


1.75.. 


78.2.53... 83., 


. 7.36 


Drawers.... 


. 1.00.. 


. 33.. 


. 1.32.. 


50. 


22. 72... 24., 


. 2.40 


Vest 


. 1.50., 


,. 50.. 


. 2.00.. 


75. 


38.1.08... 35., 


. 3.45 


Gloves 


. 1.00.. 


.. 33.. 


1 oo 


60. 


27. 87... 26., 


. 2.45 



$23.98 



$43.86 



COST OF DRESSING A FARMER'S AVIFE OR DAUGHTER WITH OR 
WITHOUT A TARIFF. 





Val. ill 

JV. v. 


Profit 
of 
McrcJCt. 


Cost 
luil/t no 
Tariff. 


Whole 
amount 
Tariff. 


Premium A dded 
on cost to 
gold. merchH 


Profit 

of 

vurchH. 


Whoh 

cost, 

tar. ad 


Hat and trim.. 


.2.00. 


. 66., 


..2 66.. 


.1.40. 


. 63. 


.2.03.. 


. 67. 


.5.13 


Flannel dress.. 


.3.10. 


.1.03.. 


.4.13.. 


.2.60., 


,1.23. 


.3.83.. 


1.27. 


.9.23 


Flannel skirt.. 


.2.00. 


. 0^^.. 


..2.66.. 


.1.65. 


. 75. 


.2.40.. 


80. 


.580 


Domestic 12yds2. 00. 


. Q>^.. 


.266.. 


.1.72.. 


, 32. 


.1.04.. 


34. 


.4.04 


Balmoral 


,.2.00. 


. Q^.. 


..2.66.. 


.1.65., 


, 75., 


.2.40.. 


80 


.5.86 


Wor.sted Hose. 


. 33. 


. 11.. 


. 44.. 


. 16.. 


7. 


. 30.. 


8. 


. 75 


Gloves 


. 30., 


, 10.. 


. 40.., 


. 21.. 


9. 


. 30.. 


10. 


. 80 


AVeb or net ... 


. 60. 


. 20.. 


. 80.. 


. 42.. 


, 19. 


. 61.. 


20. 


.1.61 


Handkerchief.. 


. 21. 


. 7.. 


. 28.. 


. 10.. 


, 4. 


. 14.. 


5. 


. 47 


Collar 


15. 


. 5.. 


. 20.. 


. 8., 


, 2. 


. 11.. 


4. 


. 35 



Cost without tariff .,...,.....$16.89 With tariff $34.04 

— Democratic Almanac, page 80. 

THE TARIFF, WHICH IS A PROTECTION TO EASTERN MON- 
OPOLY, IS NOT A PROTECTION TO WESTERN INDUSTRY. 

The protection afforded by the tariff, is partial in its opera- 
tions, and makes the hardship greater, because it destroys the 
manufacturers in one portion of the country, to build up those 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WATl. 455 

of another. If there were justice in protection at all, the West- 
ern people should at once have protection against New England. 
New England can undersell the West and break up her small 
manufacturers through her protection, but the West receives no 
advantage in return. The Western people can trade with greater 
facility by water, with London, than by railroad with Boston — 
and our own small manufacturers could successfully compete with 
both Great Britain and New England, without a protective 
tariff. 

In the discussion of this question, it must not be forgotten 
that there are two classes of manufacturers — the one class de- 
manding protection, the other able to manufacture without any 
assistance from government. The first class, composed of a few 
pampered stock companies, which avail themselves of the irre- 
sponsible privileges of their charters, make immense sums of 
money by extortion, and take advantage of the necessities created 
by this very protection. But there are manufacturing establish- 
ments that demand no protection, and need none, which furnish 
nearly all of the domestic cloths, satinets, and linsey-woolseys, 
made and worn by the rural Western people; and enliven the farms 
and households of the land, with the hum of the wheel and the 
loom, and distribute to the various mechanics through the villages, 
where the small farmer may find a ready market for the pro- 
ducts ; and in exchange, receive the labor at his door, of the hat- 
ter, shoemaker, blacksmith, and other mechanics. The incor- 
porated manufacturer, who enslaved his operatives to make his 
machinery profitable, and then robs the people of duties to give 
him immunities, is the very worst enemy of that form of domes- 
tic industry, which gives to the farmer a market at his door, and 
diffuses the wealth and business of the country in due propor- 
tion ; and which may be kept up, or discontinue, without great 
expense, just as the price of their commodities demand. Thous- 
ands who could sell their products to the village manufacturer and 
mechanic, who live at their door, and benefit them all with that 
which would be otherwise wasted, because there was no market 
for it, and of which the mechanic would be deprived, because he 
was not in proximity to it. This is the old and well-known 
history of our ancestors, when every neighborhood had its card- 



456 CKIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

ing machines and fulling mills, long before pianos and physi- 
cians, novels and French pills, were introduced into society as 
the standard necessaries of life. This style of manufacture has 
been the staple product of the Border and Western States, and 
to master the science of cloths and linens, was a part of the edu- 
cation of a good housewife. 

But in the protection which brings higher prices, there is noth- 
ing added to the general wealth. This increased amount in the 
prices, is paid from one to another of our own people : for the 
tariff has no power to effect sales in foreign markets. The only 
effect is to extort a greater price from the poor to aggrandize 
the rich ; a tribute from labor to capital, without adding one 
cent to the general wealth of the country. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 457 



CHAPTER yil. 

How Protective Tariffs make Goods Cheap. 

The Protectionists, as though to burlesque all com- 
mon SENSE, ASSUME THAT PROTECTIVE TARIFFS REDUCE THE 
PRICES OF ARTICLES MANUFACTURED, TO WHICH PROTECTION 
IS EXTENDED. 

If this be true, it is a conclusive argument against such tariffs, 
as unnecessary. 

The advocates of protective duties go much further : they in- 
sist that the prices of manufactured goods decrease as the duty 
increases. It is quite impossible to present the arguments to 
which such absurdity is driven to sustain itself. 

You have only to conceive what is most paradoxical and ab- 
surd in commerce and finances, to fully comprehend the range 
and compass of their teachings. Their theories of political econ- 
omy are addressed to that peculiar cast of minds who have re- 
ceived these monstrosities as axioms : that barbarians have a 
right to govern civilized people, to enforce the funding and pro- 
tective systems, that Christ and Paul presided over civil wars, 
that the torture is a part of civilized warfare not incompatible 
with Christian perfection, that test oaths and proscription are 
recognized elements of liberal republican governments. 

To such minds it were difficult to present an absurdity so 
gross, a proposition so monstrous, or contradiction so jialpable, 
as to challenge their doubts. 

There are times when a high protective tariff lowers the price, 
just as there is a time when misers give up their money ; a time 
when tyrants relinquish power, and usurers fail to renew their 
notes; when dissolution breaks their hold. So with the manu- 
facturing system, which invokes protection from the Government. 
After they have robbed the poor to aggrandize the rich, by high 
tariffs, it works its own destruction. 



458 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

The premium offered by the government to high tariffs, 
diverts capital from its legitimate channel to the objects which 
receive protection ; the natural result is, that those articles from 
the manufacture, of which capital is taken, become scarce, and 
the poor have to pay enormous prices for them, wliich are no 
longer manufactured ; whilst the articles, which are protected by 
government, are created far beyond the legitimate demand, and 
ruin the manufacturer, because the amount manufactured exceeds 
the relative proportion which it ought to bear to other articles in 
market. But if all manufactures are protected by tariffs, then 
they draw capital and labor from commerce and agriculture, and 
destroy their relative supply in the market, and raise the prices 
in corresponding ratios: so that ruin overtakes the manufacturer 
through the artificial protection extended to him by the govern- 
ment. This ruin is wrought in the most simple and natural 
manner. 

1. The excessive duty impoverishes the consumer and makes 
him unable to buy. 

2. The very tariffs which impoverish the consumer, pass into 
the pocket of the manufacturer, enrich his business and make 
trade unhealthy, until the vast amounts of capital and labor in- 
vited into it, create great stocks of goods, which accumulate in 
the country. 

3. Then the abundance of goods and the bankruptcy of the 
people, bring down prices far below their actual cost. The con- 
sequence never remote is, that the manufacturer suffers bank- 
ruptcy from his unnatural prosperity, and finally needs protec- 
tion ; which he cannot hope to get against a crazy home competi- 
tion, and they all sink in ruin together. 

4. This diverts frightened capital from manufacturing entirely, 
and at last the very foreign goods, against which protection has 
been levelled, of necessity itself, overrun the country and new 
protection is demanded for new follies. 

This is the only conceivable instance in which protective 
tariffs can make cheaper the manufactured goods upon which 
upon which duties are levied. 

Upon the other hand, a steady adherence to legitimate trade, 
would make the supply and demand in each branch of industry, 
in relative and profitable proportion. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 459 

Now we need answer the siraple-mlntled enquirer who would 
ask: What shall we manuflicture? The answer is at hand; 
whatever may be manufoctured with profit, just as M'hat we ex- 
port will be that which may bo exported with profit. In the 
munificence of nature, she has kindly provided for the wants of 
men in the distribution of her benefits and the happy adaptation 
of business to the wants in every country on earth. 

Trade is too extensive, involves too many interests, compre- 
hends too many persons, is too intricately interwoven in the web 
of society, to possibly admit of that general supervision assumed 
by the protective system. Trade is, by the laws of our being, 
committed to the care of the whole human family ; each man is 
the especial guardian of that part which he assumes — and the 
slightest violation of its laws, not only punishes him with its 
losses, but in the very act, transfers his lost share to others warn- 
ed by his example, who must suffer tlie penalties of the same 
same violated law. Every interference by government, is an 
unjust and unpardonable trespass upon those sacred rights of 
self-preservation, which may not be done without injustice to the 
poor and the consequent suffering of that unfortunate class of 
people, who have no voice in Congress, which can be heard in 
the clamor of contractors. The revelry of debauchees and con- 
flict of money-changers, have turned the sacred halls of the 
temple of liberty into a den of thieves, and hold a general jubi- 
lee in the overthrow of free government. 



460 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Protective Tariffs are in Conflict with the Genius of ouh 
Government. 

It is the duty of all governments to protect the people by gen- 
eral laws, equally operative, effecting in like manner, every citi- 
zen. Such is the spirit and genius of our federative republican 
system, which jirovides, that "No State shall grant any title of 
nobility." {Art. II, Sec. 19, Clause 15.) "And no title of no- 
bility shall be granted by Congress." {Art. II, Sec. 9, Clause 7.) 
"No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or 
revenue, to the ports of one State over tliose of another ; nor shall 
vessels bound to or from one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or 
pay duties in another." {Art. II, Sec. 9, Clause 6.) 

" Uniform laws of naturalization," " uniform laws " on the 
subject of " bankruptcies throughout the United States," evince 
the elevated spirit of the fathers, above all injustice or par- 
tiality. 

"What may not be directly done, may not be done indirectly. 
What may not be done in violation of the letter, may not be 
done in violation of the spirit of the law. But in the duties 
levied upon imports, which discriminate in favor of specific ar- 
ticles, protecting one class of the people at the expense of the 
other classes, there is as clearly a privileged order, as though 
the members of it were called Barons, Earls, or Lords. 

This offence against the spirit of our system is the very essence 
of protective tariffs. 

All legislative interference in trade, is a wrong perpetrated 
against those to whose injury the discrimination is made. 

Every duty levied upon articles manufactured, takes frora 
the consumer, and puts into the hands of the manufacturer, the 
exact amount of money which makes the difference between the 
price of the article, with and without duty, which the govern- 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 4G1 

mcnt lias no more right to take from the consumer and give to 
the manufacturer, than it has to send agents into the field of the 
wheat-grower, and take his wheat, for the use and benefit of the 
cotton-grower, or, take one-half of the wages of the black- 
smiths, carpenters, stone masons, schoolmasters, and physicians, 
to bestow luxuries upon the iron masters, woolen manufacturers, 
and bankers. There is no possible difference between taxing the 
poor one-half of all that they expend for food and raiment, and add- 
ing the amount in duties on what they use; or in sending a pub- 
lic officer to seize it in their trunks, or attach it in the hands of 
their employees, and handing it over to the manufacturer. 

The people have been injured by the immense but natural 
exercise of the protective power of government ; until every man- 
ufacturer, every farmer, and nearly every other business man, be- 
gins to believe and feel that, in some mysterious way, the govern- 
ment owes him a living, and that he is, therefore, entitled to 
public support in his business and trade, without regard to the 
wants, interests, or rights of other men. 

In this wicked legislation, the only persons placed beyond the 
pale of protection, are those who most need it. Those, whose 
suffering arouses sympathy in the bosom of philanthropy, are 
actually taxed to support the idle, profligate, and voluptuous. 
Such is the perverted condition of the morals of trade. 

Manufactures, and the products of the earth, were made for 
the supply of men ; and men were not created for the benefit and 
ownership of manufacturers, bankers, and monopolists. 

The poor certainly have the same right to demand cheap food 
and raiment, in the natural markets of the world, that the rich 
have to demand government aid, to increase their profits upon 
the food and raiment of the poor. 

The manufacturers and capitalists complain, that a refusal to 
enslave the poor by tariffs, to protect them, is an invasion of cer- 
tain mysterious rights of property, which they acquire by virtue 
of their vocation. But the protection itself, is an invasion of 
life, doubling the demands upon labor, without increasing its 
power to satisfy want. " That man takes my life, who takes that 
on which I live." 

It is the right, and, moreover, the bounden duty, of the poor. 



462 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

to their large and growing families, to buy as cheap as they can ; 
and no earthly power hatli a just right to invade this prerogative 
of nature, and life itself. Tiie corn laws of England, which 
were kept up at the expense of human life, have no advocates 
amor.cr the friends of free and liberal government. 

But why should not the people of an inhospitable climate, have 
cheap clothing? Is it not most remarkable, that the man Avho 
denies this right to the poor, is a manufacturing prince, who de- 
mands half his earnings to ride in fine carriages, live in splendid 
houses, riot on luxuries, and bequeath millions to his offspring? 

No subject is susceptible of so many, and such striking illus- 
trations. A fair statement is a demonstration. The Avhole pro- 
tective system, is simply one to limit the amount of food and 
raiment used by the poor. This is undeniable. 

1. The duty increases the price, just tlie amount added to the 
original selling price; if it did not do this, it could be of no 
possible advantage to the manufacturer. 

2. If it adds to the price, it diminishes the quantity, or the 
quality, to that extent. 

A tariff on clothes, or clothing, is a limitation of the amount 
to be worn by the poor, who have a given amount of money, and 
can only lay that out ; and the inci-ease on the price per yard is a 
diminution in the number of yards. But to illustrate tliis fully : 
A. has a large family, needs four beds with coverlets and blankets, 
with just money enough to buy them ; but there is a duty levied 
of one hundred per cent, upon bed-clothes, so that the man has 
to accommodate his family with two beds, instead of four. The 
other two beils have been, by the government, presented to some 
manufacturer, whose sons are pleasure-hunting in Europe, and 
whose daughters are revelling in Boston. The poor farmer has 
to limit the shoes on his horses, by the tariff on iron ; as well as 
the shoes for his family, by the tariff on leatlier. These men 
look upon the reasonable price of the commodities necessary to 
the support of the poor, as the veriest calamities. 

The tarltf being made for the benefit of the manufacturers, he 
limits the amount of supply against the poor, just as the govern- 
ment interferes to augment the prices. 

What is the difference between licensing manufacturers to pil- 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL, WAR. 463 

lage the agricultural and commercial interests of a country to the 
amount of one-half their value, and adding such duties to their 
manufactured goods, as doubles their price to the consumer? In 
each case the loss is the same. It does not make it better that 
the manufacturer pleads poverty or inveighs against competiters. 
Legitimate business begets competition. A man who sells water, 
finds a competitor in the rivers and rain. Dealers in oils and 
candles, finds a competitor in the sun. The ice merchant finds a 
competitor in long winters. The woolen clothier is ruined by 
short, mild winters. Every merchant is endangered by two ene- 
mies, the lack of demand and the superabundance of supply ; 
but the customers are always that much the gainer by the com- 
petition. Restrictions of trade, or destruction of competition, 
afford no remedy for any of the evils complained of by the pro- 
tectionists. The want of employment among willing, in(his- 
trious men, is always caused by the unnatural restrictions upon 
trade, which, like water, seeks its level ; and will only stop its 
wonted course when dammed up, or drained by unnatural causes. 
The protectionists, to provide against the disasters of trade, de- 
mand that the washer-woman muit pay four cents more on soap per 
pound, for fear the soap-maker, worth only one hundred thous- 
and dollars, Avill be ruined by being undersold by foreign man- 
ufactures. That is hard enough, but then she has to pay a duty 
of one dollar on a pair of shoes for her children, for fear the 
shoe merchant and leather dealer, with half a million, will be 
broken up by foreign competition. But the same demand is 
made for her cotton and woolen clothes, to protect the manufac- 
turer, worth only millions, from foreign competition and bank- 
ruptcy. Then she must pay one hundred per cent, upon her 
andirons and smoothing irons; to protect the iron-mongers, worth 
millions more; and the same for the cutler, worth quite as much. 
So the poor woman supports two fiimilies by her constant labor : 
sinks to the grave through poverty. Is it any wonder that she 
is poor, and with such a premium given, is it any wonder that 
those she supports, are rich ? The manufacturer complains that 
he is not making the money, yet somebody else has it. The 
highwayman has a like complaint, that he lost many dollars by 
losing opportunities to get it : the only difference between these 



464 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

gentlemen, is, that the law would prosecute the one and protect 
the other, in their vocations of plunder. Whenever the business 
of the manufacturer is not remunerative, then he must change 
it, just as farmers change their grain, and stock-raisers change 
their stocks, when it ceases to pay them for their labor. 

Adam Smith says : — " To prohibit by a perpetual law, the im- 
portation of foreign corn and cattle, is, in reality, to enact that 
the population and industry of the community shall, at no time, 
exceed what the rude produce of its own soil can maintain." 
( Wealth of Nations, Booh iv, chap. 2) 

But what is true of corn and cattle, is precisely true of every 
other product, whether raw or manufactured ; and a tariff law is 
simply a law, limiting the amount of what may be ate or worn 
by the laboring masses, or poorer people of a country. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 465 



CHAPTER IX. 

High Tariffs Beget Smuggling. 
THE EVILS OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 

It is the enemy of the government in the destruction of that 
part of its revenues, which are provided to come through duties. 

The amount of protection given by duties to manufacturers, 
is precisely the premium offered to smugglers 'who, ever on the 
qui Vive, have the entire accessible American coast to enter into 
competition with American manufacturers, where Vice-Presi- 
dent Breckenridge and Senator Benjamin could pass through a 
carefully blockaded coast, when the whole United States navy 
was assisting the whole Federal army to preserve the coast in- 
violate. The smuggling cruisers, in times of profound peace, 
will cheerfully run the risks, to reap the enormous profits of the 
adventure. For it must not be forgotten that when there is a 
duty of one hundred per cent, to protect the manufacturer, there 
is a premium of one hundred per cent, offered to smugglers to 
carry on their business. 

The army and navy requisite to successfully guard the Ameri- 
can coast against smugglers in times of high tariff, would not 
be sustained by ten times the revenues derived from such tariffs 
to support them. Yet smuggling does but little to reduce the 
price of goods, and leaves to the people the difficult choice, whether 
to pay their money for goods to the tariff swindlers, or British 
smugglers. Such is the extent of the smuggling and the vast 
capital, and the great number of ships employed, that it is very 
clear that tlie amount of goods brought in that way is not less 
than those imported ; but these smugglers share with the manu- 
facturers in the protection of duties. 

Moreover, this illicit commerce is transferred from American 
30 



466 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

to British vessels; striking its triple blow at manufacturers, 
commerce and agriculture, — in imitation of its parent, the Pro- 
tective Tariff, — by the smaller amounts paid into the custom 
houses. 

This fact is demonstrated in the accompanying tables : 

In the year 1790 First tariff 5 per cent. 

" " 1798 , Raised to 12|- " 

" " 1804 Raised to 15^ " 

" " 1812 Raised to 27 " 

" " 1816 Reduced to 25 " 

" " 1824 Raised to 28 « 

" " 1828 Raised to 90 " 

During the war of 1812, the home manufacture of every kind 
of goods was greatly stimulated by the condition of the people ; 
the spirit of trade in the country, was destroyed by the war, 
every farm-house had the wheel and the loom as a part of its 
furniture : and the young women of the house were operatives 
under the superintendence of the mother; while the fathers and 
brothers were in the army, fighting for free trade and sailors' 
rights. 

The following table will exhibit the fact incontestably, of the 
receipts of customs from the year 1815 to 1827 : 

1815 $36,306,022 51 

1816 27,484,100 36 

1817 17,524,775 15 

1818 21,828,451 48 

1819 17,116,702 96 

1820 12,449,556 15 

1821 15,898,443 42 

1822 20,500,775 91 

1823 17,003,570 80 

1824 20,385,430 42 

1825 24,358,202 57 

1826 20,248,054 30 

1827 22,472,067 03 

In 1815 the receipts were $36,306,022 51 

In 1827 " " " 22,472,067 03 

$13,833,965 48 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 467 

A falling off, under the protective system, of nearly fifty per 
cent., notwithstanding the increase of population, is quite as 
great, which makes the disparity still greater; instead of decreas- 
ing from $36,306,022.51 in 1815, to $19,700,000, it ought to 
have increased to $44,900,000. These tables have been taken far 
back, when the workings of the government were regular and 
under no pressure, and where the result of the two systems were 
discernible in the collection of the revenue. 

This demonstrates another fact, that what is denominated the 
protective system, not only adds heavily to the expenses of the 
necessaries of life, but it depletes the treasury and forces a larger 
direct taxation upon the country. 



468 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 



CHAPTER X. 

High Revenue Tariffs Unjust. 

The great debt has given a pretext for levying a revenue 
tariiF, placed at the highest figures. 

The Tariff, as a source of revenue, is simply a tax to be reg- 
ulated as any other tax, upon the same principles and relative 
assessment upon the people. 

The Ee venue Tariff, considered purely as a tax, is unjust, 
whether compared with the obligations of the people to support 
the government, or the tariffs of other nations. In Athens, 
tariffs or duties on corn, Avere one-fifth or twenty per cent. In 
England, for revenue purposes, never more than twenty per 
cent., though often but five per cent., before 1787. Even the re- 
taliatory taxation was no higher than twenty-seven per cent. 
Experience has demonstrated that anything over twenty per cent. 
is not a revenue, but a protective tariff. Duties in France rarely 
exceed eighteen per cent., when it was raised on linen to twenty 
per cent., the people murmured almost to revolution. 

In Holland, the richest, and in Switzerland, the freest gov- 
«;rnmeut in Europe, the people boasted that their tariffs never 
exceeded twelve per cent., and even now, they scarcely ever ex- 
ceed twenty per cent. 

Cuba is the richest of all the West India Islands, peerless in 
agricultural productions and commercial intercourse with the 
world. Her exports amount to four tiraos as much per capita 
as those of the United States, and three times as much as those 
of Great Britain. Her tariff duties are generally less than 
twenty per cent., and scarcely ever reach twenty-five per cent., 
in a fair and equal computation. 

Alexander Hamilton, the father of the protective system, pro- 
posed in his report, no such protective duties on either iron or 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. ' 469 

wool, as those which now oppress us. There are now from forty 
to one hundred and fifty per cent, on iron, and from fifty to two 
hundred per cent, on woolens and cottons ; on all of the neces- 
saries of life the tariff of duties is five times as high as was re- 
commended by Hamilton. Even spirits paid but one shil- 
ling per gallon. 

The first tariff under the Constitution, when money was scarce, 
and American manufactures were weak, did not exceed twelve- 
and-a-half per cent.; in a single instance it approached fifteen. 
Until after the second^var with Great Britain, there was scarcely 
an article which paid a higher duty than twenty per cent., gen- 
erally at ten or fifteen. A table of duties from 1790 to 1823, 
in this chapter, shows the scale of duty. But the duty which 
is actually imposed, is at least twenty to twenty-five per cent, 
more than appears in the list to pay the profit of the exporter 
on the money advanced. 

The tariffs of 1816, 1824, 1828, were made purely for pro- 
tection. 

Lord John Russell says: "It is obvious, that high protective 
duties check importation, and, consequently, are unproductive to 
the revenue; and experience shows that the profit to the trader, 
the benefit to the consumer, and the fiscal interests of the coun- 
try are sacrificed where heavy import duties impede the in- 
terchange of commodities with other nations. The same states- 
man says : But upon a careful view of our commercial imposts, 
we came to the conclusion, that by removing prohibitions and 
lessening restrictions, it was possible to replenish the treasury, 
and, at the same time, to secure to the working classes a greater 
command of the necessaries of life, at steady and moderate 
prices." 

A and B have each $1,000 in money. A hoards his $1,000, 
withdrawing it from circulation and trade, in this way damaging 
business; he pays at most, not more than two per cent, in taxation. 
B lays out his money in business, and for everything he buys, must 
pay fifty to one hundred per cent, on the original cost, to be di- 
vided between revenue officers and manufacturers. Is this just? 
Is it wise? Can argument vindicate this wickedness and folly. 
Yet this is precisely what we do to the injury of the poor, who 



470 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 

have to spend all they earn, and for the protection of the rich, 
who keep all they have, and continually add to their store. 

If duties are levied as a tax for revenue purposes, there is 
just one fair way in which to do it, and that is to place an equal 
tax upon all exportations, in about the same ratio that other 
taxes are levied. 

The amount of real and personal property in the United 
States in 1860, was estimated by the census as follows, namely : 

The assessed value of real estate $6,973,106,049 

Personally 5,111,553,956 

$12,084,669,005 
The true reported value $16,159,616,068 

Two per cent, is a high and heavy tax upon property, and 
would be, if levied upon the whole taxable property of the 
United States, $24,169,338,010 ; or if levied upon the true value 
of the property of the United States, would be the enormous 
sum of $32,319,232,136, which would not pay the interest upon 
the public debt, capitalized with its pensions, annuities, standing 
armies of military and civil officers. 

This sum of interest is frightful, but not to be compared with 
a tariff which, calculating every thing fairly of duty profit, 
reaches the enormous sum of one hundred per cent. uj)on every 
thing used by the people ; and a levy of taxes made upon the 
property of the United States, making the present tariff the 
basis, would not be one cent less than $8,079,808,034. But 
what reason can be given Avhy one class of citizens and one 
manner of property should be taxed at the expense of others, in 
a just, fair and equal government, for the protection of all. 

But there is another view to take of this subject. No people 
can long afford to pay more than six per cent, on loaned money. 
The interest on the whole of the property of the United States, 
at six percent., would be $699,576,964. This ,sum of interest 
is exceedingly meagre when compared with the monstrous tariff 
paid by the people. 

That a duty may be levied in reasonable sums for the purpose 
of revenue upon such articles as contribute to voluptuousness. 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 471 

and affect not the ordinary commodities of life, is not objection- 
able, since it goes into the treasury of the United States from 
about the same person and in the same amounts that it would 
by direct taxation ; even then, five per cent, is a very heavy 
amount for the consumer to pay upon every article for consump- 
tion, and the proper estimate to place upon this amount, is to 
compare it with the rate of taxes upon land and money, which 
ought never to be more than two per cent., (and then this rate 
of taxation should be only for short periods), and the interest 
which he receives upon loans, which rarely exceeds eight per 
cent, per annum. The labor and business of the masses of the 
people rarely pay more than six per cent., unless it is in the 
specific view of the starvation of the poorer class of people. It 
will be difficult to justify the payment of one hundred per cent, 
upon their daily bread, who, with all of their earnings, are sorely 
enough pressed to equally share the comforts with the carefully 
sheltered domestic animals ; for it must be borne in mind, tliat 
the poor not only pay a tariff' upon what they wear, but they 
pay the tariff* on the goods consumed by the farmer, who adds 
on the price of his grain, though it makes him no richer. 

The tariff of 1842, then odious as amounting almost to a poll 
tax, was about two dollars a head upon the people of the United 
Statss, amounting to double the expenses of the government 
annually since its foundation ; including all of the wars W'ith 
Great Britain, the quasi French war, and all of the Indian 
wars up to that time. But the tariff of 1842 is incomparably 
lighter than the one under which we suffer. This tariff is in- 
finitely more odious than the trivial tea tax, which provoked our 
Revolution ; and more burdensome than the French salt tax, 
which provoked the French Revolution. 

Alexander Hamilton wisely concludes that commerce is the 
real source of wealth of a great people ; then arises the question, 
whether a people, with peerless commercial facilities, advantages 
and resources, may, with safety, surrender this power of wealth 
wdiich must forever place them most eminent among nations ; to 
pander to the illegitimate lust of wealth of a few narrow-minded, 
selfish monopolists, M^ho, living in opulence, demand support 
at the public expense. The United States have facilities for 



472 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

commerce never before enjoyed in the liistory of maratlme 
nations. 

Our sea-coast is commensurate with our whole western and 
eastern boundary, embracing a large portion of the southern and 
northern limits. It brings us into communication directly with 
Asia, Africa, and Europe, South America and Australia, without 
circumlocution of route. But our inland position is scarcely in- 
ferior. The IMississippi, arising in the icebergs, reaches out her 
extended arms, gathers her waters from the snows of the moun- 
tains, the evaporations of the lakes ; and the clouds of the con- 
tinent makes a highway which could bear on its bosom all of 
the products of the earth, for thousands of miles, through the 
entire Union, of Avhich it is the chief natural bond. The 
Missouri, in no wdse inferior in capacity or extent, penetra- 
ting the inexhaustible wealth of the Eocky Mountains and the 
Ohio, drains the western slope of the Alleghenies ; the Illi- 
nois, which forms a beautiful avenue to the lakes; the Ten- 
nessee and Cumberland, which reach out semi-distant to the gulf; 
the Monongahela, that flows beautifully along the base of the 
mountains; the Alleghenies, that ventures near to the bays 
of the Atlantic; the James, the Hudson, the Connecticut, 
the Potomac, and the St, Lawrence, that open up a high^vay to the 
ocean. Such facilities for commerce there never has been in any 
other country. But the facilities for creating and supporting 
merchantmen and navies, is certainly not equalled anywhere. 
Forests hedging up the Fivers and clothing the mountains, in 
themselves the foundation of a trade and commerce which, for 
centuries to come, will give employment to the carrying trade. 
The products of our soil duly apportioned, borne to its legiti- 
market, will bring in return the tea of China, the spices of the 
Indies, the silks of France, and the products of the world, in 
exchange for our industry. 

A wonderful commerce may be established in all jjarts of 
the earth, giving them the fruits of the soil in exchange 
for their wares, and cultivating a kindlier feeling and nearer 
neighborhood with all mankind ; enriching our houses and cities 
with the wealth of their trade, and giving in payment, what 
•would otherwise perish on the ground ; carrying out the spirit of 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 473 

freedom in commerce, the most powerful and efficient of all the 
agents of civilization and Christianity. 

But tariffs for revenue are unequal, as tariffs for protection are 
unjust. Every tenant in the buildings of William B. Astor, 
who supports a flimily in propriety and decency, and every clerk 
of A. T. Stewart, or of the Rothschilds, pays just as much in 
tariffs as does his principal. Stewart and Astor, whose property 
amount to millions, pay no more in duties for what they eat and 
wear for its protection by the government, than do their clerks, 
who have nothing but their naked hands to feed their families. 
It is only the more remarkable that the stupidity of men should 
form a covering for such rank inj ustice. The farmer's plain wagon, 
worth $100, pays at least three times the amount of tariff that is paid 
by the merchant prince's coach worth $2,000. The poor won^n, 
who drinks her coffee to strengthen her nerves, pays precisely 
the same amount of tax which is paid by the wife of the mil- 
lionaire; and the crippled old man, tottering on the grave's 
mouth, with scarcely enough money to finish the journey of life, 
pays for his tea and opiates, precisely what is paid by Jay Cooke, 
who revels in luxury, and gambles upon the public stocks. 

Alexander Hamilton, in his celebrated report on domestic 
mauuflictures, makes the following suggestions, and uses the fol- 
lowing arguments : 

'' Pecuniary bounties have been found one of the most effica- 
cious means of encouraging manufactures, and it is in some 
views the best. Its advantages are these : 

"1. It is a species of encouragement more positive and direct 
than any other, and for that very reason, has a more immediate 
tendency to stimulate and uphold new enterprises. 

" 2. It avoids the inconvenience of a temporary augmentation 
of price, which is incited to some other modes, or it produces it 
in a less degree. 

" 3. Bounties have not like high protecting duties, a tendency 
to produce scarcity. 

" 4. Bounties are sometimes not only the best, but the only 
proper expedient for uniting the encouragement of a new object 
cf agriculture, with a new object of manufacture. 

" It cannot escape notice, that a duty upon the importation of 
an article cannot otherwise aid the domestic production of it, 
thaa by giving the latter greater advantages in the home mar- 



474 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

ket. It can have no influence upon the advantageous sale of the 
article produced in foreign markets ; no tendency, therefore, to 
promote its exportation. 

" As often as a duty, upon a foreign article, makes an addition 
to its price, it causes an extra expense to the community, for the 
benefit of the domestic manufacturer; a bounty does no more. 

" Protecting duties of this nature, evidently amount to a virtual 
bounty upon the domestic fabrics, since, by enhancing the charges 
on foreign articles, they enable the national manufactures to 
undersell all their competitors." 

The greatest variety could not court a more flattering tribute 
to its convictions, than the views of Hamilton against duties. 

Now, whenever it may be apparent that any species of manu- 
facturing is necessary to the general welfare of the country, and 
cannot be constructed by the manufacturer himself, without gov- 
ernment aid, then let the government extend such aid as may be 
necessary. 

This plan is honest, because it is direct. The people know 
just what they pay; to whom, and how they pay it. 

There can be no evasion of revenue laws by smuggling, which 
is now so common that mankind look upon the smuggler as a 
public benefactor, furnishing the poor with cheap goods ; and it 
will be many centuries before a sense of justice will condemn 
the smuggler, who assists the stinted poor to sustain the manu- 
facturing princes and money lords in the enjoyment of an odious 
monoj)oly, which inures to the positive oppression of the labor 
of the country. 

Mr. Jeiferson uses this demonstrative language in regard to 
the tariff policy : " I duly received yours of the 23d ultimo, as 
also two pamphlets you were so kind as to send me. That on 
the tariff I observed, was soon rejirinted in Ritchie's Enquirer. 
I was only sorry he did not postpone it till the meeting of Con- 
gress, when it would have gotten into the hands of the members, 
and could not fail to have a great effect, perhaps a decisive one. 
It is really an extraordinary proposition that the agricultural, 
mercantile and navigation classes, should be taxed to maintain that 
of manufactures." 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 475 



PETITION OF THE MERCHANTS OF LONDON TO PARLIAMENT. 

"To the Honorable the House of Commons of the United King- 
doms of Great Britain and Ireland, The humble petition of the 
undersigned merchants of the city of London, showeth tliat for- 
eign commerce is eminently conducive to the wealth and pros- 
perity of a country, by enabling it to import the commodities 
for the production of which the soil, capital, climate and indus- 
try of other countries are best calculated, and to export, in pay- 
ment, those articles for which its own situation is better adapted. 

" That freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost 
extension to foreign trade, and the best direction to the capital 
and industry of the country. 

"That the maxim of buying in the cheapest market and selling 
in the dearest, which regulates every merchant in his individual 
dealings, is strictly applicable, as the best rule for the traders of 
the whole nation. 

"That a policy founded on these principles would render the 
commerce of the world an interchange of mutual advantages, 
and diliuse an increase of wealth and enjoyments among the in- 
habitants of each State. * * * * « 

This declaration of axioms in political economy, by so able a 
body as London merchants, in a country where such vast sums 
of wealth are invested in manufactures, is significant of the fol- 
lowing facts, which they state at great length in detail: 

"1. That tariifs inflict on the bulk of consumers the necessity of 
submitting to ]jrivations, in the quantity or quality of commodi- 
ties. 

" 2. That restriction in commerce does not add to our own 
wealth, but it is demonstrable that the importation of articles 
into the country, does not diminish our wealth, but it enables us 
to sell what we do not want, by buying what we do want, from 
those who manufacture them. This is just what makes com- 
merce. 

" 3. That no ultimate benefit accrues to those manufacturers 
in whose favor prohibitory duties have been passed. 

" 4. That if you prohibit one article by heavy duties, the de- 
mand will come up from all other producers upon the govern- 
ment upon their behalf, and drive them to the necessity of ex- 
cluding everything which we produce — gold among the rest — 



476 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 

for it is with a gold-producing jjeople a commodity, in nugget as 
well as a medium of exchange. We then do on j)aper what the 
Chinese do by stone; we build great walls around our commer- 
cial existence, beyond which it is not allowed to pass. 
"5. That the most libsral is the most politic course." 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. "" 477 



CHAPTER XL 

Villainies of the Tariff. 

The injustice of the protective system is scarcely more bare- 
faced, than the corruptions of the revenue system of duties. 
These are so apparent, that proof becomes difficult to make it 
plainer. If 10,000,000 families, or 30,000,000 persons, wear 
an article upon which the duty is fifty per cent., or amounts to 
fifty dollars, they then pay $300,000,000, per annum; not for the 
support of government, but for the enriching of manufacturing 
princes, who are already clamoring, because they have not where- 
withal to spend their means ; or barns and houses in which to 
store their goods. But the flagrant villainy of this system of 
robbery, is still more apparent in a case like this : A has 
$1,000,000 worth of stuffs, on hand, and a duty of one hundred 
per cent, is levied upon this kind of goods. By this very legis- 
lation, $1,000,000 is placed in the hands of the fortunate owner. 
■ Not by chance, however, but generally by connivance and bri- 
bery of unprincipled Congressmen, wdio are in the secret service 
of the wholesalers. . 

What a crime against justice, and honor, and humanity, that 
enormous sums should be made out of the very life-blood of 
the people, their food, and fire, and raiment, and shelter. 

But this crime often becomes a powerful instrument of specu- 
lation, and immense sums of money are made, by the collusion 
of members of Congress, and immense holders of stocks. We 
cite but an instance, which was consummated by flagrant bri- 
bery of members of Congress, who sold their votes for immense 
sums, to the whiskey owners, and then gravely cast them in favor 
of an exorbitant duty upon the manufacture of alcohol and spir- 
itous liquors. 

The extent of this enormous speculation, may be gathered from 
the following statistics : 



478 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

The amount of spirltous liquors distilled in the year 1860, in 
the United States alone, was 88,002,988 gallons, at an estimated 
value of $24,253,176, at the time of the passage of the duty on 
such liquors. It is safe to calculate that there was, at least, the 
products of two years on hand. Then we have 176,005,976 
gallons, with a value of $48,506,352, with a duty of $2,00 per 
gallon, $352,071,952 added to the wealth of these liquor holders, 
or more than seven-hundred per cent, upon the original value, 
leaving $300,000,000 in their hands, after they had used fifty 
millions of dollars for the purchase of a corrupt and mercenary 
Congress, who were, most likely, bought for a less sum, and 
their votes i:»ut into the market at a lower jirice ; but this calcu- 
lation makes due allowance for the payment of commission, to 
that vast army Avho throng the Capital to corrupt its legislation, 
and pollute the atmosphere which poisons everything with 
which it comes in contact, and attempts the destruction of 
everything with which it is brought in conflict. 

The frauds practiced in Congress, begets the wicked cheats 
practiced m consequence of it. After the Congress had raised 
the price of whiskey, unfortunately it did not abolish men's 
vicious appetites. There was even more whiskey and delete- 
rious combinations drank, than ever before. But this trespass 
upon health, and happiness, was the result of the premium 
offered by the foolish and corrupt legislation, which debauched its 
members and enriched the whiskey dealers. 

But all tariffs are premiums offered to fraud. The necessities 
of the poor drive them to seek refuge in low prices, and the 
cheats in manufacture, form at least two-thirds of the articles of 
every kind in tfce whole market. Shoes, hats, cloths, cottons, 
and mixtures of every kind, and these are all bought by the 
poor, who are unable to buy the first quality. With these pre- 
miums offered to fraud, which stimulate smuggling, to bring 
sound wares to the country, be not surprised that the home vil- 
lains with less scruples, should impose upon the consumer, as the 
foreign smuggler stealthily defrauds the government. The de- 
liberate cheats perpetrated upon the market, never could extend 
without the aid of tariff, but such is their extent, that the con- 
sumer is never surprised except when, by the merest accident, he 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 479 

finds himself the lucky purchaser of an article which does not 
readily fall to pieces by the handling. 

These frauds are the legitimate results of the system of duties, 
and they practically discriminate in the same kind of food and 
raiment, in favor of the rich and opulent. 

So struck and stung with this injustice was Henry Clay, that 
in 1832, he says in the United States Senate : "If the 

UNIVERSALITY OF THE USE OF OBJECTS OF CONSUMPTION DE- 
TERMINE THEIR CLASSIFICATION, COFFEE, TEA, AND THE 
SPICES, IN THE PRESENT CONDITION OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY, 
MAY BE CONSIDERED NECESSARIES, EVEN IF THEY ARE LUXU- 
RIES. Why ARE NOT THE POOR, BY CHEAPENING THEIR 
PRICES, IF THAT CAN BE EFFECTED, BE ALLOWED TO USE 
THEM." 

TAXATION AND TARIFFS COMPARED. 

In the ever changing effort to lighten the burdens of taxation 
by shifting it from one place to another, it must finally rest upon 
the shoulders of labor, which not only pays everything, but 
produces everything. 

All the ^Yeight of taxation falls upon labor, and is a drain 
upon the creative energies of the country. 

Capital always manages to get into coalition with the govern- 
ing power to oppress labor. 

Capital pays nothing. When houses are taxed, the landlord 
transfers the tax to the tenant, and adds it to the rent, and gen- 
erally exacts it in advance. 

If the land is taxed, the proprietor deducts the taxes from 
the value of the crops. Necessity compels this, for if he did 
not, he would have to dispose of his property to relieve him of 
taxation. 

If this taxation is made in the form of tariff, then the manu- 
facturer adds it to the price of his goods, with the stam])s, profits, 
interest, storage, freight, clerk hire, and house rent, until it 
reaches the squalid hovels of the poor, who never lay up a 
month's rent in advance, or provisions beyond their weekly 
wages. The successive accumulations are piled up by the last 
retailer, who doles out his goods as his customers may be able to 



480 CBIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

pay for them. Every item of intervening cost is added as 
it comes due at each counter, until it has gone the routine of 
trade. 

The rich tax-payer knows the araonnt of his taxes, feels the 
weight, and com^ilains of it; whilst the half-starved, half-naked 
wretch who pays the tariff, is assured that it is so much added 
for his protection, and that it has cheapened his food and rai- 
ment to the full amount of the tariff levied. 

These simple-minded people believe these absurdities, witli the 
same credulous wonder that they witness jugglers take off heads 
and put them on again, shoot bullets into his hat, and wrap it up in 
his handkerchief. They cannot tell when or how, but are will- 
ing to take his oath that it has been done. 

It is so that the poor fellow pays, all told, quite one hundred 
per cent, upon his food and raiment. He pays two dollars for 
what one ought to buy, but they prove to him that he gets it the 
cheaper by paying two prices for it. 

The taxes and tariffs of late have thrown off all disguise, and 
aim their blows at the poor by taxing, directly, those things 
which are necessary to his existence. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 481 



CHAPTER XII. 

Character of Manufacturers. 

Who are these manufacturers who ask immunities not 
common to the citizen ? They amount to the merest handful of 
the American people, of whom they demand support, by levying 
tribute on the price of the commodities of life. 

In this class, you must exclude the following business, name- 

1. The whole agricultural population. 

2. Those engaged in commercial pursuits. 

3. Those eno-aged in the fisheries. 

4. The country tradesmen. 

5. The miners of oil, gold, copper, &c. 

6. Professional men of all classes. 

7. Daily laborers. 

8. Those engaged in the miblic works of the country. 

Leaving an exceedingly nRagre interest, demanding a protec- 
tive tariff, and, it may be assumed, without controversy, that there 
is not a single interest, material to the prosperity of the country, 
which needs protective duties, other than those which are inci- 
dental, by raising revenue for the support of the government. 

There can be no reason, founded in justice or right, for the 
protection of any one business, at the expense of another. The 
claim set up is a fraud upon all of the laws of industry. Intelli- 
gent labor will always apply itself to such pursuits as will most 
liberally remunerate the operative, and, at the same time, con- 
tribute most to the general wealth. Any departure from this 
rule, is a sacrifice of the common good, and a waste of labor. 

The cotton planter demands no protection, because his labor 
remunerates him. The cotton planter needs no protection, be- 
cause protection could not benefit him. 
31 



482 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

The manufacturer asks protection, and pleads as cause, that he 
has to employ labor at such prices, and in such business, as will 
not remunerate him. This, although it is not true, as is amply 
proven by their own reports, which exceed all other branches of 
business, would be a good reason for the abandonment of a pri- 
vate business, which could not be carried on without public do- 
nations; but certainly not for the appropriation of the daily 
wages of the poor people of the country, to support manufactur- 
ing princes in opulence ; nor could it change the laws of political 
economy. 

If the manufacturer in New England may make this demand 
and receive this aid, where shall it lead us? Some gentleman 
has a few mulberry trees, or has planted a thousand acres of the 
morus multicauUs, has purchased many thousand silk worms, has, 
at great expense, gone to Europe, and employed much time in 
learning the whole silk business ; and applies to Congress to pro- 
hibit the importation of silk, by making every person who wears 
silks, pay such duty upon all of the silks worn in the country, as 
would remunerate him for his expenses, loss of time, &c. 

Some enterprising gentlemen propose to raise tea in competi- 
tion with the Chinese, and demand protection against that peo- 
ple who can raise his beverage cheaper ; and both the silk and 
tea growers, give as a reason, why they cannot compete with the 
Chinese or French, in the groMth W the several articles, is the 
depreciated prices of labor in France and China ; as the woolen 
and iron manufacturers urge the exceedingly low wages of labor 
in England, and the iron producing countries of Europe. 

What remedy do these magnanimous gentlemen propose to 
make up for the low wages of labor ? Why, simply taking one 
half of all the wages, in duties on their tea, coifee, sugar, hats, 
coats, breeches, on every thing from the soul of the feet to the 
crown of the head, from the very laborers for whom they are 
demanding protection of the government, and incorporated in 
that very protection. 

Another enterprising gentleman in the mountains, inaccessible 
by railroads, and surrounded by barren deserts, has an iron bed 
and coal field, covering a full thousand acres of land, and that is 
his only property ; and unless the government will prohibit the 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 483 

importation of iron from elsewhere, or levy a tax upon every 
body who uses iron, of one hundred per cent,, is ruined, or, at 
least, has lost the value of a vast speculation, which cost him a 
song ; and his vast cataract of unequaled water power will go on 
wasting its force in the sea, until the end of time. But it is well 
worthy of enquiry, whether it is not really better that this gen- 
tleman forego his princely speculation, than that every poor man 
in America should pay two prices for his iron, and in the general 
exaction of manufactures, reduce the wages of his labor one-half, 
before it has reached his pocket. It were far better for the peo- 
ple using iron, to knight him, grant him a peerage, or pay his 
board at the Astor or Girard, with his family, for life. 

This is the true and just test of the productive power of any 
business, that it is, at least, self-supporting. It ought to yield 
such profits as will pay the fair interest on the money invested, 
and wages suitable to the ability of the managers and operatives. 
AVhcnever it does not realize this much, self-preservation requires 
its immediate abandonment. 

The great (not Secretary) McCulloch, says : "A man who does 
not succeed in a business carried on at his own door, so well as 
one who resides a hundred miles oif, must look for the cause in 
his own want of skill and industry, and should seek rather to 
improve himself, than to discard his rival." 

This is the unchangeable law of trade, and the immutable law 
of justice. It is the life of industry, and the secret power of 
liberty, that men choose and change their avocations, as they may 
be made profitable and agreeable. 

The protection by law, of a privileged class, by oppressing or 
abridging the rights of the people, or at the expense of the en- 
joyment of others, is the most odious style of aristocracy, and 
the most oppressive and oifensive mode of predatory inroads 
upon private property. 

It were laughable to hear the pitiful, canting Puritan, whin- 
ing in his nasal twang, for protection of his manufactures, at the 
very time, when his profits have absorbed the labor of the coun- 
try ; but it is deplorable to see the consumers, the poor of the 
country, trodden down by the most odious, monstrous taxation, 
to support this injustice. 



484 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

There can be no more ridiculous jumble of political economy, 
nor a greater outrage upon the prosperity of a people, than the 
support of one branch of industry, at the positive expense of all 
the other industry of the country. 

Yet this body of political empyrics scarcely cease their eulo- 
gies upon the benefits to manufacture, until they declare, in 
rhapsody, their devotion to commerce; this is less remarkable, 
when it is remembered how this confusion was embodied by the 
Chicago Convention, which President Lincoln never hesitated to 
declare, as the interpretation of his political views, and paramount 
to all constitutional obligations. 

Commerce, more than any other branch of industry, creates 
wealth, and dispenses affluence with a liberal hand; aud opens up 
to the people an abundance of the necessaries and comforts of 
life, and places within their reach, the luxuries of the world. 

Commerce is the source of the wealth of all great countries, 
without which no first-class power ever has or ever will exist. 

Commerce and agriculture are twin sisters, mutually embrac- 
ing and supporting each other. Commerce makes free cities, and 
agriculture makes free countries. Both agriculture and com- 
merce, are the patrons of manufactures. 

Afrriculture feeds manufactures, and commerce bears them 
each to their legitimate market, and acts as factor for both. They 
are all the common property of the world, and cannot be re- 
strained. 

The protective tariff is the enemy of all these great sources of 
wealth, power, and glory, of a great nation. 

The protective tariff is a misnomer ; it was never made to pro- 
tect manufactures as a system of universal wealth, but to destroy 
their universality, by prohibiting, restricting, and encouraging 
them, as the case might be, under pretense of fostering some par- 
ticular manufactory in some given locality, at the expense of the 
whole manufacturing world beside. 

The tariff is the positive enemy of commerce, destroying its 
business of transportation by the prohibition of importation and 
exportation of goods, without which there can be no commerce 
to prevent the manufacture of articles, but to protect their prices 
in favor of the rich aud against the poor. The object of the 



CRIMES OP THE CIVIL WAR. 485 

tariff is not to increase, but to diminish manufactures, that the 
monopoly, which absorbs the business, may necessitate the con- 
sumer to buy at advanced and exorbitant prices. 

Tlie tariff is the bane of agriculture : exacting a tribute of full 
one-half of its products; to settle the controversies and conten- 
tious between rival manufactories. 

The tariff is a selfish mercenary, which wars in the interest 
of monopoly. After it has destroyed manufactures, by setting 
them at war with each other, driven commerce from the ocean 
for the want of employment, and robbed agriculture of half her 
hard earnings, to take sides with fighting manufactures ; the 
narrow, monopolizing spirit of prohibitory tariffs would, were 
it possible, lay a restriction upon the clouds, that it might specu- 
late upon water, just as they hoard flour and meat to speculate 
upon the anguish of the destitute. These monopolists have erected 
no toll-gates upon the ocean, only because she cannot be placed in 
bonds ; but they have, at every port of entry, a collector's office, 
to gather up the wealth of the world as a tax upon what God 
had ordained as free. The air that men breathe, has not been 
monopolized by a joint stock company, only because its unchain- 
ed liberty defies the prison of the tyrant, and passes through the 
store-houses of the monopolist, without restraint ; who would 
dole it out to the poor, or tax the wealth of the rich, for the 
privilege of indulging in its luxury. 

The sun would add to the list of monopolies, and his precious 
light be a fortune in the hands of some shrewd, sharp man, 
were his glories within his monopolizing reach, and the foun- 
tain of his light subjected to his control. 

The purpose of commerce is to extend and command trade ; 
knowing no bounds but the habitable globe. It catches the 
commission of the Saviour to the Apostles, as it falls from his 
lips : " Go ye into all the world, preaching the gospel to every 
creature," and fulfils its appointed mission. 

The office of the tariff is to arrest trade, and cut off inter- 
course with other nations, and travel back in the pathway of 
progression to the ages, when each tribe of savages was content 
to kill the beast in his lair, to clothe himself with its skin, and 
eat its flesh with his fingers. 



486 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

The old philosopher, Franklin, never at a loss for illustra- 
tions, which shone from his clear mind like the rays of the sun, 
says : " I have seen so much embarassment, and so little advan- 
tage in all the restraining and compulsive systems, that I feel 
myself strongly inclined to believe that a State which leaves all 
her ports open to all the world upon equal terms, will, by that 
means, have foreign commodities cheaper, and sell its own pro- 
ducts dearer, and, on the whole, be most prosperous." 

Again : " Perhaps it would be better if government meddle 
no further with trade than to protect it, and let it have its course. 
Most of the statutes or acts, edicts, arrests, and placards of Par- 
liament, princes and States, for regulating, directing, or restrict- 
ing trade, have, we think, been either political blunders, or jobs 
obtained by artful men for private advantage, under pretence of 
public good. When Colbert assembled some wise, good mer- 
chants of France, and desired their advice and opinion how he 
could best serve and promote commerce, their answer Avas in 
these three words only : ' Laissez nous faire ' — let us alone. It is 
said by a very solid writer, that ' lie is well advanced in the 
science of politics, who knows the full force of that maxim, 
' Pas trop Gouverner ' — not to govern too much ; which would 
be of more use when applied to trade, than in any other public 
concern. It were, therefore, to be wished, that the commerce 
was as free between all of the nations of the earth, as between 
the several counties of England ; so would all, by mutual com- 
munications, obtain more enjoyment." These propositions are 
demonstrative, and forbid amplification. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 487 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Curse of Manufacturing Monopolies. 

If the doctrine of protection were at all admissable in a gov- 
ernment of equals, there are no classes of industrial pursuits that 
contribute so little to the happiness of society, as the manufac- 
turing companies and monopolists of the country. There are 
no classes of people so degraded by the direct supervision of 
their employer, as are the operatives in these establishments. 

Like the clock, they are forced to move with mechanical pre- 
cision. The watchman keeps the time exact of their entrance 
into the work-shop, and carefully notes their application daring the 
w^orking hours. Children are educated mechanically to this 
business, and grow up destitute of social advantages, and die al- 
most in the same condition. Their labor and surveillance are 
only less degrading than States prison life, and, beyond all com- 
parison, more confining, monotonous, and exhaustive of human 
life, than any plantation labor hitherto assigned to any part of 
the American slaves. 

Their manhood is absorbed in that of the proprietor of the 
establishment in which they are employed. 

On election mornings, the proprietor's party ticket is hung up 
in large letters, where it will attract the attention of every voter, 
with the general understanding that the operative should cast 
his vote for it. If, on the election day, he should vote in o])po- 
sition, he will be called to the paymaster's room and informed 
that his services are no longer needed in the establishment. 

Tliis exercise of freedom rarely occurs, however. A long con- 
tinued bondage keeps him in poverty, until he finally looks upon 
his work-shop as the horse looks upon the tread-mill, and is so 
impoverished that he could not remove from it if he would. 
He has no place to go, and worse than all, his factory life has 



488 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

disqualified him from the pursuit of any other business, if he de- 
sired to go, or had the means to remove. Xot a greater propor- 
tion of these men escape from this bondage than did the slaves 
from the plantations. The able exposition by British reformers 
of the condition of their manufacturing systems, could not be 
improved upon, and apply quite as ai)propriately to America. 
We quote from one of the most moderate and philosophical, that 
" the increase of our manufacturing system has unquestionably 
effected already a considerable revolution in the morals and hab- 
its, which had previously characterized the bulk of the inhabi- 
tants of this country. The confined and crowded state of man- 
ufactories has a decided tendency to shorten the average dura- 
tion of human life, and to corrupt the feelings of the workmen 
employed in tiiem ; we therefore doubt whether any angmenta- 
tion of profit to be expected from a great extension of our man- 
ufacturing system would, in the eye of an intelligent and humane 
legislator, compensate for the moral and social evils unavoida- 
bly connected with it." 

THOMAS JEFFERSON ON THE EVILS OF AMERICAN MANUFAC- 
TURES. 

" The political economists of Europe, have established it as a 
principle, that every State should endeavor to manufacture for it- 
self; and this principle, like many others, we transfer to America, 
without calculating the difference of circumstance, which should 
often produce a difference of result. In Europe, the lands are 
either cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator. Manufac- 
ture must, therefore, be resorted to from necessity, not of choice, 
to support the surplus of their peoj)le. But we have an immen- 
sity of land, courting the industry of the husbandman. Is it best, 
then, that all our citizens should be employed in its improve- 
ment, or, that one-half should be called off from that, to exercise 
manufactures, and handicraft arts for the other. Those who 
labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, (if ever he had 
a chosen people,) whose breasts He has made his peculiar deposit 
for substantial and genuine virtue. It is tiie focus in whicli He 
keeps alive that sacred fire, which, otherwise, might escape from 
the face of the earth. Corruption of morals, in the mass of cul- 
tivators^ is a phenomenon, of whicli no age nor nation has fur- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 489 

nished an example. It is the mark set on tliose who are not 
looking up to heaven, to their own soil, and industry, as does the 
husbandmau, for their subsistance depend for it on casualties 
and caprice of customers. Deiiendence bco-ets subservience, and 
venality suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for 
the designs of ambition. Thus, the natural progress and conse- 
quence of the arts, has sometimes been retarded by accidental 
circumstances ; but, generally speaking, the proportion which the 
aggregate of the other classes of citizens bear, iu any state to 
that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its 
healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to meas- 
ure its degree of corruption. While we have land to labor, therf> 
let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or 
twirling a distaff; carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in 
husbandry, but, for the general operations of manufacture, let 
our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provis- 
ions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the 
provisions and materials and, with them, their manners and 
principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across 
the Atlantic, will be made up in happiness and permanence of 
government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the 
support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the 
human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which 
preserve a republic in vigor; a degeneracy in these, is a canker 
which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." 

THE DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR. 

How slowly have we advanced in that progressive civilization 
which destroys the castes of poverty and wealth, to establish on 
firm foundations the just distinction between virtue and vice, 
ignorance and knowledge, coarseness and culture. When we 
contemplate the great and perpetually deepening and widening 
chasm which, by wicked men, is kej^t up between the rich and 
poor " in the earth, which is the Lord's, with the fulness thereof, 
and all that dwell therein," where all were created in his image, 
and heirs of his heritage, we are startled at our own crimes. 

The distinction begins in the cradle, and travels slowly to the 
grave, keeping regular step to the mournful music of the op- 
pressed, whose quiet songs come up from the deep-toned strings 
of a broken heart, and die out unheard in the hovel and garret, 
each step marking the haughty march of the oppressor. 



490 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

The child of the poor, breasting the storm in thin raiment ; the 
child of the rich, dressed in purple and fine linen. 

The poor live in open cabins, the rich in splendid mansions. 
The poor man's child eats coarse food on rough tables, the rich 
man's child " fares sumptuously every day." 

The poor man's child struggles with ignorance, though his 
immortal mind is a burning diamond hid in the rubbish of pov- 
erty, groping in darkness for an aperture to emit its brilliant 
light, which will shine long after the tires of the sun have died 
out. 

The rich man's stupid child, surrounded by a troop of pro- 
fessors, is dragged and driven through the rugged road of the 
classics, to the altar of the Alma Mater, with as vivid a view of 
its wealth and beauty, as the prisoner has of the romantic scenery 
of the Alps or Alleghenies, through which he has been hurried 
blindfolded, and in broken trips, in the dead of night. 

At the holy altar of marriage, the })oor man takes his poorer 
bride as a companion to travel through the dismal road of fac- 
tory life, each day, to deliver at night the profits of his wages 
to the manufacturing lord, retaining only the scanty pittance to 
strengthen him to add new tribute to his master's treasury. 

The rich man marries one richer than himself, that he may 
rise one step higher, as he tramples down the poor one step lower. 
Each day he receives the wages of his machinery, the profits of 
his hired hands, the tariff upon goods, the rents upon lands, the 
usury upon monies, the dividends of banks, the revenue from 
railroads, and the income of estates ; to add new tasks to his hire- 
lings, increased power to his machinery, higher tariffs upon his 
goods, advanced rents upon his houses and lands, higher rates 
of usury upon his moniel, greater dividends upon his banks, 
larger revenues from his railroads, appreciating incomes from 
his estates. 

When sickness comes to the poor man's cabin, the nostrums 
of the country store, are his only remedy, if perchance he may 
spare money from the mouths of his children to buy them. 

The rich man commands the greatest medical skill of the land, 
which is brought to his aid. 

When the poor man dies, encircled by his humble friends, he 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 491 

is soon forgotten by the world. He is quietly laid in his grave 
under the shadow of the forest oak, which is bathed with the 
honest tears of his orphan children, left destitute, to travel alone 
over the same rough road which he has forsaken gladly. When 
the insatiate grave has claimed its own, the spring birds warble 
the funeral service ; the wild eglantine grows upon his grave ; 
his body has gone quietly to the earth, and his spirit to the God 
wlio gave it. 

Or perchance a friendless pauper, whose end is described in 
Thomas Noell's 

PAUPER'S DRIVE. 

" There's a grim one liorse in a jolly round trot, 
To the church-yard a pauper is going, I wot. 
The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs, 
And hark to the dirge that the sad driver sings. 
" Rattle his bones ojpr the stones 
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns," 

Oh where are the mourners ? Alas ! there are none : 
He has left not a gap in the world, now he's gone, 
Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or man. 
To the grave with his carcass as fast as you can. 
" Rattle his bones over the stones, 
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns." 

What a jolting, and cracking, and splashing, and din, 
The whip how it cracks, the wheels how they spin. 
How the dirt right and left o'er the hedges is hurled. 
The Pauper at length makes a noise in the world. 
" Rattle his bones over the stones, 
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns." 

Poor pauper defunct, he has made some approach 
To gentility, now that he's stretched on a coach. 
He's taking a drive in his carriage at last, 
But it will not be long, if he goes on so ftist. 
" Rattle his bones over the stones. 
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns." 

But a truce to this strain, for my soul it is sad 
To think that a heart in humanity clad. 
Should make, like the brute, such a desolate end, 
And depart from the light without leaving a friend. 
Bear softly his bones over the stones. 
Though a pauper, he's one whom his Maker yet owns." 

" The rich man also died, and in hell he lifted up his eyes." 
His body is robed in grandeur, dead though he be. He is fol- 
lowed to the tomb by the bankers, brokers, lawyers, merchants, 
and physicians, and reverend clergy, who participated in his 



492 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

luxury, were partners in his enjoyments, cured his maladies, de- 
fended his crimes, and gave ecclesiastical condolence to his last 
hours. 

As though God were mocked and Heaven could be hoodwinked, 
the pageantry is kept up until disgusted human nature sickens 
in contemplation. The body of the rich man, putrid with vo- 
luptuous living, scarcely sinks to the vault in which it is hid 
from mortal eyes, until the worms commence their feast in fight- 
ing for the most delicious morsels of his body. His children 
enter chancery suits for the possession of his estates. To per- 
petuate the revelry, the furious devils keep up the infernal har- 
mony, contending for dominion of his soul. 

The distinction is perpetuated beyond the grave. The rich 
man is careful in his will to provide for his memory. True, he 
grasped everything within his«reach, robbed the government, 
cheated the ignorant, beat God's people, ground the faces of 
the poor, amassed a fortune which bore the expenses of his fam- 
ily magnificently to ruin. Yet notwithstanding, the well-paid 
clergyman chants his praises as a saint of light. On the most 
beautiful spot in the consecrated cemetery, a monument is reared 
to his memory, to delude the world. On that monument should 
be written : Sacred to the memory of Dives, the manufacturing 
Prince, who lived in a palatial mansion, travelled with his splen- 
did retinue in oriental grandeur, reveled in apulence ; died as he 
lived, surrounded by servile flatterers, was laid out in state, the 
expenses of all of which was borne by the suffering poor, who gave 
at least one-half of all they should have ate and worn, as a 
tribute to his dazzling glory. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAK. 493 



BOOiEC six:ti3:- 



CH AFTER I. 

The Curse of the Debt Greater than the Debt Itself. 

The burdens of taxation, consequent upon the Federal debt, 
are but its smallest evils subsequent. 

The very nature of this debt requires the appliances of des- 
potism for its collection. 

1. To secure the debt, labor must be kept in subjection to 
capital, so that no mere freak of liberty may work out the eman- 
cipation of the people, and no perad venture shall allow failure to 
intervene. 

2.' The process is simple. Just disfranchise the men of prop- 
erty, and enfranchise those negroes who have none; confiscate 
the property of the rich land-holders, and divide up their lands 
among vagabonds ; then issue a proclamation, that every man is 
a criminal who owns |20,000, and does not purchase or procure a 
pardon. 

3. The proposition is simplified by allowing the creatures and 
instruments of the bondholders, who have no property, to vote 
away the property of others. 

4. Then suffer none to fill offices of trust, profit, or power, ex- 
cept the tools of monopolies ; and exclude all of known ability, 
or integrity of character. 

5. To complete the degradation of the people and enforce these 
odious measures, prescribe test oaths, which scandalize civiliza- 
tion, and thereby get rid of the opposition to the payment of the 

bonds. 

6. Engraft an amendment upon the Constitution, which makes 
this unconstitutional, illegal, unjust, and cruel debt a primary 



494 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

part of the government, so that every member of Congress 
must swear to support it, and be estopped from uttering one 
word agarnst it, or be expelled for projjosing its abrogation in 
any form. 

7. The suffrage of negroes and Chinese, and a mercenary sol- 
diery, would be requisite to sustain higher tariffs, excessive 
taxation, and extend a surer guaranty to bondholders. 

Everybody now understands that it is the settled purpose of 
the mongrel party to adopt the follow hi g measures : 

1. Negro voting in every State in the Union. 

2. A standing army in every Congressional district. 

3. The conscription systems of Europe for filling up the 
army. 

4. The general confiscation of property of the Southern peo- 
ple. 

5. The division of the lands araono; the negroes. 

6. Arming the negroes as soldiers, and mingling them among 
the whites, all of which is to be done to secure the negro vote of 
the Southern States. 

But these measures are mere instrumentalities preparatory and 
subservient to the higher purpose of these monsters of cruelty 
and crime, to establish as permanent institutions of the govern- 
ment : 

1. The British funded system. 

2. Banking systems and stock-gambling. 

3. Tariffs to support manufacturers, by starving and freezing 
the poor. 

4. An army of tax-gatherers to corrupt the elective franchise, 
and keep the people in surveillance. 

All these things are necessary to be done, that this funding 
system may be fastened as a fixture, and transmitted as an in- 
heritance upon the country, untaxed and appreciating in value 
and amount. The machinery for this purpose, is now being test- 
ed in the enforcement of the reconstruction military govern- 
ments in the South, to prepare for its enforcement in every part 
of the Northern States. The very worst elements of society 
now in communities, and the loosest driftwood which sweeps by 
in the flood-tides of emigration, from North to South, under the 



CEIMES OF THE CIVIL "WAR. 495 

auspices of the Freedmen's Bureau, Mill be added to the voting 
strength of the country, whose government is administered as a 
pretext for the robbery of the people. 

Already highwaymen and convicts, of States prisons, made 
the executioners of laws too infamous to be enforced by good 
men. 

MILITARY SATRAPS. 

Experience has given to history this one truth, which will 
never change its force among men ; that funded debts and stand- 
ing armies will enslave any people. These evils are inseparable. 
A standing array will necessitate a funding debt, to support it ; 
and a funding debt will require a standing army to collect it. 

No sooner was the funding system fairly adopted, than the 
cunning stock-gamblers were on the alert, and provided the mili- 
tary scheme, now in operation, for the government of the people 
without law, by the arbitrary will of military governors, of 
nameless odium. 

In one case, a debauchee, whose life has been equalized only 
by his amours, murders, and infamy — suspends courts, decides the 
titles of estates, and holds the lives of the people in his hand, to 
be disposed of at will. 

In another, a blustering military pretender, who lost his army, 
commissary stores, parade coat, and commission ; a drunkard, a 
loafer, and braggart, is now playing military governor and tyrant, 
conquering women and children, and associating, in disgusting 
familiarity, with abandoned negroes. 

This nameless crime against civilization, of placing barbarians 
over cultivated gentlemen ; crime against Christianity, in placing 
heathen over Christians ; against human nature, in placing the 
most loathesome of all the family of man over the most highly 
refined of the Caucasian race, is but an offspring of this villain- 
ous funding system. 

History affords neither precedent nor parallel, for the attempt 
to place the vagabond rabble in the government of a country, 
over her refined and able men. 

The decent people still exercise a limited liberty of speech, 
under duress. The right of free speech is gone ; liberty of the 



496 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

press has been suppressed by usurpation. They now exercise 
their freedom at their peril. They enjoy precisely the same lib- 
erties which are occasionally indulged in Spain, Austria, France, 
and Russia, by the indifference of the tyrants or the utter pusil- 
lanimity of the people, who are so habitually stupefied by con- 
stant submission to the debasing yoke, that they are no longer 
sensible to the indignities perpetrated upon their rights and per- 
sons. Under the horror in which they live, the common law 
of our degradation assures us that they hold their liberties at the 
mercy of the tyrants ^vho bear sway over them ; that all that 
has been done is lawful, and may therefore be done again, as it 
was done before. The only guarantee left them, is that which 
they may have in revolution. Constitutional liberty in the 
United States is the footstool of tyrants, by which they clamber 
to power. The Constitution is made the merest pretext by which 
office and authority are assumed ; but the most flimsy apology 
for the protection of the people against the invasions of their 
rights. The Constitution is virtually repealed ; those sworn to 
protect and defend it, make it the subject of ridicule. The great 
law of the majorities, is just as feeble to interpose its power for 
our protection, as the Constitution heretofore has been. It was 
the minority that overturned the Constitution, in defiance of the 
majority, and has systematically proceeded to destroy all gov- 
ernment. We are living under a usurpation of manifold atro- 
city. Those claiming authority over us are usurpers. A usurp- 
er is one M'ho takes from the people their rights. This is the 
highest signification of the term. There may be many, as Avell 
as one usurper. The style of tyranny now employed to control 
the people, is the most thorough, complete, and complicated 
usurpation that was ever employed to rule or destroy liberty in 
any country. The preliminary measures by which power was 
attained, were simple usurpations. The elections were usurpa- 
tions in all of their varied machinery. The disfranchisement 
was a usurpation, for no citizen may be divested of any right, 
without first having forfeited it by due process of law. But dis- 
franchisement has been the essence of their elections — disfran- 
chisement, without trial, without arrest, simply by sweeping 
legislation. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 497 

The satrapy was a necessity to the destruction of liberty, tmd 
doubly necessary to the disfranchisement of the whites, and the 
enfranchisement of the negroes. 

But this army must be perpetuated and strengthened, to en- 
force the crazy schemes and unnatural system of government con- 
tern jilated. 

Language is too feeble to describe, and credulity too faint, to 
apprehend the real condition of the government, and outrage im- 
posed upon the people of the satrapys. 

Counterfeiters, against whom indictments lay unsatisfied ; mur- 
derers, dripping Avith innocent blood, who escaped the gibbet's 
noose by the pardoning grace of generous Governors, are control- 
ing legislative assemblies. 

But this is an essential part of the machinery necessary to carry 
out this carefully adjusted system of public robbery, and will be 
amplified as necessity demands. 

What apology can we offer for the governments of West Vir- 
ginia, Tennessee, and Missouri? Nothing but that they are 
necessary to protect the interest of the funding debt, the monop- 
olists, and money oligarchy, based upon the bonds. These are, 
moreover, the model governments now on trial, to be made gen- 
eral as the debt requires it. 

Such is the varied suffering, crime and oppression inflicted 
upon the people by the satrapys, that the subjugation of Ireland, the 
butchery of Hungarians by Haynau, and the slaughter of Poles 
by the Eussian despots, will be forgotten in the recital of the 
fiendish barbarities practiced by northern armies, government 
agents, and the freedman's bureau, upon the whites and blacks of 
the Southern States. It will add no argument to the general 
plea, that the Russian and American despots sought alliance and 
interchanged civilities. This was but natural, that a semi-civ- 
ilized despot, who holds his people at his will, should cono-ratu- 
late a cotemporary tyrant upon the abrogation and overthrow of 
all constitutional restrictions upon absolute power. 

But it will be the marvel of all history, that the attempt was 

made to tax a people for their own degradation, demandino- the 

remaining tenth for burning the nine-tenths of all they had • 

after destroying their implements of labor, driving thousands 

32 



498 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

of helpless women into exile in a foreign land, exacting the pro- 
dnct of the naked lands, destroying medicines and food, putting 
men to death for failing to minister to the sick, and feed the 
hungry. The funding system created by the civil war, ends in a 
slavery infinitely more intolerable than that which was proposed 
to be destroyed by it. 

All of the invasions of liberty knawn to conquerers, have been 
made upon the American people. 

All of the outrages peculiar to spiteful tyrants, have been re- 
peated among us. All of the deceptions common to cruel des- 
pots, have been perpetrated with a jocular glee, that makes us 
shudder. The horrors of war, the miseries of bankruptcy, the 
murder of women, degradation of men, and destruction of gov- 
ernment goes on, still the criminals hold up their heads and boast 
of prosperity, and aspire to continue rule in the land. Such is the 
deceit of wickedness, and such are the delusions of crime, when 
committed by public officers. 

In the exhaustless ingenuity of tyranny to perpetuate itself, 
it will riot in the vitals of its victim, until wasted strength is 
followed by the feverish delirium, and delirium is quickly suc- 
ceeded by death. The hectic flush that paints the cheek of the 
breathing corpse, is readily mistaken for the opening bloom of 
health. The fiery cancer which is slowly devouring the organs 
of health, lies hid in life's secret chambers, and laps the blood 
that warms the heart ; whilst the victim revels in luxury, un- 
conscious of danger, until he awakens from his dreams in the 
jaws of death. 

The feverish prosperity created by artificial wealth, is the na- 
tural prelude of general bankruptcy. 

The cancer of despotism, concealed under the alluring name 
of liberty, has eaten out the vitals of our institutions, and left 
us powerless. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 499 



CHAPTER II. 



The Tax-Gatherer. 



The tax-gatherer is the chief pei'sonage of the funding sys- 
tem, who, at the cheapest wages, performs the most offensive ser- 
vice in the rudest manner. He is generally chosen for his want 
of feelino; and insolence in the common walks of life. He 
wrenches alike from widow and orphan, from pnling childhood 
and decrepit age. His wide range of discretionary plunder in- 
cludes stamps, incomes, licenses, and excises. He demands a 
moiety of the coal that warms the shivering body, the match 
that kindles the fire, the bread that feeds the tottering frame, the 
raiment that hides the feeble limbs, and the medicines that kind- 
ly come to pour their oil into the wasting lamp of life, — to 
everything which relentless nature has imposed as a necessity 
upon our being. 

This unpopular appendage of all bad governments ; the pes- 
tilential scourge of monarchies, almost unknown to us, is now an 
embellishment in the hideous picture of the bloody times. 

The Federal tax-gatherer, a trespasser upon liberty, unknown 
to our forefathers, who sat smoking their pipes beside their log- 
heap fires, while they told the simple story of freedom to their 
children's children. The oldest living men had never seen this 
plague of Egyptian frogs, locusts and lice combined, except in 
the brief sojourn of the excise. In western Pennsylvania, the 
proud yeomanry, to resist the excise, raised up against the Father 
of his Country, and it was the crowning act of the life of the 
great Washington, to urge its early repeal. 

But this sentinel of Puritanism (the Publican) can be seen 
at every corner of the street. His office is put in the most 
prominent places in your cities, around your court-houses, in 



500 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

your towns, his subs, and deputies and spies, and pimps, and 
detectives, his countless retinue, are quartered upon the public. 
They employ paper mills and printing-presses, to keep their ac- 
counts against the people, armies of clerks to record them, and 
multitudes to go out and gather up the substance of the land, 
distilled from the sweat of the brow of the yeomanry. 

This gentleman still pays his periodical visits to your houses ; 
peering into your garden, to see what you raise ; poking his nose 
into your pots, to smell what you eat ; prying into your wani- 
robes, to see what you wear. He is not satisfied with mere ob- 
servations. Lest something should escape his espionage, he 
swears you upon the Holy Evangelist to search your heart, and 
then publishes your private business to the public eye, for the 
double purpose of inviting the usurer to take advantage of your 
financial condition, and call in your mischief-making neighbors 
to turn common informer upon you. Dr Johnson has happily 
defined these men — " Excise, hateful lax levied upon commodi- 
ties, and adjudf/ed not hy the common judges of property, hut 
lor etches hired by those to ivhom excise is j)aid." ■ 

" Willi hundred rows of teeth the shark exceeds, 
And ou nil trades like Cassawar she feeds."' — ManeIi. 

"Hire large houses and oppress the poor 
By farmed excise." — Dryden. 

The tax-gatherer comes with the stamp, as of old ; your business 
is entrammeled with the odious stamp — the hateful badge of 
that galling servitude which our proud fathers scorned to place 
upon their deeds, choosing rather to let their contracts and con- 
veyances rest upon their word of honor, than to surrender their 
right to dispose of private property or transact confidential busi- 
ness, without the iuterlerence of the government espionage. It 
■was the long cherished pride of our glorious ancestors, that the 
unchallenged power of George III, could not impose upon a 
free people a system which conceded their abjection. 

This system of unspeakable oppression has become universal 
and unsparing. These hungry task-masters come down upon 
you like a wolf on the fold. They stamp your deeds ; stamp 
your affidavits; stamp your agreements and appraisements; 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL AVAR. 501 

stamp your assignments ; stamp your bank-cliccks and bills of 
exchange; stamp your bills of lading and bills of sale; stamp 
your bonds ; stamp your cards ; stamp your certificates of loan, 
certificates of deposit, certificates of stock, certificates of profit, 
certificates of record, certificates of weight, certificates of every 
kind, certified transcripts; stamp your charters; stamp your 
clearances ; stamp your contracts ; stamp your conveyances ; 
stamp your entries; stamp your insurances; stamp your leases; 
stamp youf legal docunients, your letters of credit, and letters 
of administration; stamp your manifests; stamp your mort- 
gages; stamp your pension 2iapers and passage tickets; stamp 
your matches; stamp your cigars; stamp your medicines, 
your perfumeries, cosmetics ; stamp your powers of attorney ; 
stamp your photographs: stamp your probates of will, your 
bonds of executors, letters of appointment, certificates of ap- 
pointment; stamp your protests and promissory notes; stamp 
your quit claim deeds, releases and discharges; stamp your 
receipts; stamp your returns; stamp your deeds of trust; stamp 
the varied contents of your M'arehouses. 

The widow, sheltered in her shanty, standing by the bedside 
of her dying child, is not permitted to light her lamp, until she 
pays for the stamp imposed upon the matches; nor can she ad- 
minister the medicine, until she has paid for the stamp upon the 
phial or box containing it. The photograph of your dead wife, 
or mother, or sister, or daughter, or that of the Immaculate 
Saviour of mankind, must be defaced with the vulgar picture of 
the sinister countenance of some vain-glorious plundering tyrant, 
who, not content with robbing the laboring masses, thrusts 
his indecent presence upon your attention, in the moments of 
your most sacred devotion, or in the sacred chambers of vour 
grief. 

The tax-gatherer is a toll-dish upon the food, as a sponge-cloth 
upon the raiment of the laboring masses, to enrich the opulent. 
The income tax enslaves your productions; and, in the wealth 
of their mercenary ingenuity, all the means devised by the in- 
finite resources of despotism and fraud, have failed to meet the 
growing demands of the fathomless debt, which will bind in 
chains the progressive industry of the unborn generation of our 
race. 



502 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

The business of these tax-gatherers is even more detestable, 
when we remember the purposes for which the money is collected. 
This universal scourge of nations is now omnipresent. 

He perambulates the Shenandoah Valley, searching among the 
ruins of the old and magnificent mansions, for the taxes upon 
Avhat has been left. He adds to the unremuuerative toil of tax- 
gatherer, the benevolent mission of colporteur, and sells the pho- 
tograph of Philip Sheridan, with the panoramic scenes of the 
burning valley, embellished with the re-sort of his campaign 
among the defenceless women and children, emblazoned in capi- 
tal letters : — 

" I HAVE DESTROYED OVER TWO THOUSAND BARNS, FILLED 
AVITH WHEAT, AND HAY, AND FARMING IMPLEMENTS; OVER 
SEVENTY MILLS, FILLED WITH FLOUR, AND WHEAT ; ALL OF 
THE HOUSES WITHIN AN AREA OF FIVE MILES, WERE BURNED." 

— P. H. Sheridan, &c. 

These pictures will stir up the smouldering fires of a glorious 
manhood, smothered, but still alive. 

The women, poor, but proud as on the day when the monster 
trod their sacred hearths as a scourge of darkness, will not cheer- 
fully give the fruits of their labor to pay the remaining debt in- 
curred in their destruction. Time will not improve the temper 
of their children, growing into manhood, who hear the thrilling 
story from the mother's lips, of their absent father, whose smiling 
face they barely recollect, as disappearing in the smoke of their 
burning homes. 

The tax-gatherer in the invaded States, who has been ostler or 
hangman in the North, whence he has been expelled as the de- 
bris of society, Avill, with his venal hirelings, enter upon their 
duty in Lexington, Virginia, which distant generations will ven- 
erate, as the home and tomb of the immortal Jackson. 

Amid the scenes where fiends, invested with the human form, 
gloated their eyes with the lurid glare of burning villas, feasted 
their ears with the shrieks of the aged and infirm, struggling 
to escape the consuming fire, like satyrs dressed in military 
costume, danced upon the ashes of libraries, bestowed by states- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 503 

men, philosophers, jurists, warriors aucl divines, as keepsakes 
of liberty. 

Nor will the impudence of the versatile collector be in the least 
abashed, to bear with him the life-sized likeness of the idiot 
Hunter, who left in flames the cottage that gave him shelter in 
childhood, burned the house in which he was born, and desolated 
the home of the negro nurse who gave him suck ; insatiate with 
hate, driven from his pillage with inferior force, strewing his 
march with the starving, wounded, and dead, that fell victims 
to his imbecile cruelty. 

The tax-gatherer will grow merry, when, with a coarse grin, he 
assures the people that their taxes shall be appropriated to pay 
for dismantling the monument of AYashington, and leveling in 
ashes the literary institution which wore his name, and burning 
the village homes of women and children, in the quiet recesses 
of the mountain. 

This government menial will carry his business and espionage 
to Columbia, where the most beautiful inland city of America 
stood monumental cf a peerless civilization. 

This lovely home of a prosperous people was adorned with 
statues, paintings, libraKies, institutions of public charts, spacious 
temples of the living God, beautiful edifices reared to the pro- 
mulgation of learning, science, and the fine arts, rich in the tro- 
phies of a revolution which had secured our common indepen- 
dence; their archives were cherished with a fond devotion, only 
less precious than the sepulchres of her Pickneys, Haynes, 
Lowndes, Butlers, Calhouns, and Hamptons. 

Where now the charred trunk of the magnolia and palmetto, 
mingle their withered branches with the smoky columns of 
ruined streets and avenues, laid waste by barbarian hordes, will 
the tax-gatherer go, to sift the cinders, like an Eastern juggler, 
to get from the ashes, the tribute due his government. 

To amuse himself, and terrify the people, he takes the biogra- 
phy and portrait of Tecumseh Sherman, who wore not in vain, 
his savage patronymic, in his march of desolation from the great 
river to the ocean. He will explain the justice of taxation, by 
exhibiting Sherman's correspondence with "Wade Hampton, who 
defended Columbia ; whose father, Wade Hampton, defended the 



504 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

country against the British, in 1812; ^vhose grandfather, Wade 
Hampton, fonght side by side with Henry Lee, in the old revo- 
lutionary war. These memorials would remind the people of 
the precious privileges of " the best government the world ever 
saw" stimulate them to admiration of their benefactor, and a 
cheerful surrender in taxes, what has escaped the general conflag- 
ration. 

The tax-gatherer suffers no conscientious qualms to interfere 
with the faithful execution of his commands; no difference how 
reimlsive to others, or to nature, his offensive task may be. 

In Jackson, the taskmaster of the people will search for his 
quota of levies amid the ruins of the capital ; among the ashes of 
archives, evidences of property, records of estate upon which 
helpless widows and innocent orphans were dependent for food 
and raiment, and shelter, to pay the expenses of the conflag- 
ration. 

The jjublican is the representative of the new nation ; he will 
leave nothing, eitlier nefarious or odious, undone. He will 
glean the fields of their scattered grain. 

He will carry his duplicate into every business, trade, industry, 
and inheritance. 

He will go where arbitrary taxes were levied, under the 
shallow pretence of assisting the government ; but for the real 
purpose of enriching the worst and weakest usurpers, by robbing 
the people. 

He will not forget St. Louis, where furniture, carpets, libra- 
ries, and household goods, were indiscriminately seized, and dis- 
tributed among pimps, spies, and vagabonds, who loitered. around 
the mock military heroes, as vultures linger around the putrid 
remains of an effete carcass. 

The publican will congratulate his victims upon their good 
fortune in escaping so Avell, and expect their gratitude, that the 
military lords had not chosen to chop off their heads, like a 
French cook disposes of his capons. 

The tariff does its work so handsomely among the laboring 
masses, that other taxation would be superfluous and impossible. 

The power of the publican is the plummet which sounds the 
depths of our financial ruin, and hopeless degradation. He will 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 505 

' . . . . 

urge, with ferocious pertinacity, his repulsive errand, until the 

great question is brought, for final adjustment, before the last 

great court of popular will. 

After he has returned from his Southern tour, he can commence 
his peregrinations among the unslaughtered, of the hundreds 
of thousands who were driven like oxen to the butchers' stall, 
or like sheep to the slaughter. He can press his demand upon those 
whose children were slain like wild beasts — mercilessly hurled 
before breast-works, and trampled down like dust — and convince 
them, if he can, that their property shall be mortgaged, to pay the 
expenses incident to their degradation, and buy the chains which 
are forged for their perpetual slavery. The tax-gatherer assumes 
an elevation of character, talks exhaustless logic, and stately 
rhetoric, to convince the people that the highest purpose of life 
is to enslave themselves by taxation, to pay incendiaries for burn- 
ing up cities, destroying records, and wantonly exterminating 
flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, droves of horses, mules and hogs, 
and carrying on a war in their midst; compared Mdth which the 
desolations of Alva, Alaric, Timour, and Ghenghis, were mild 
and gentle. This argument will be repelled by the homeless 
children of these ruin.ed people; they will protest against the 
payment of these taxes upon all they eat, and drink, and wear, 
to pay the despoilers of their homes. 

As long as the human heart can moisten the emotions of re- 
venge, and veneration for brave and martyred ancestry remains 
a hallowed instinct of exalted human nature, the children and 
the children's children of the desolate country, will lift up 
their Voices to the God of Justice, in protest against the pay- 
ment of the debt made in the overthrow of their government ; 
laying waste their country, destroying their liberty, butchering 
their young men, insulting their old men, and letting loose a 
degraded, heathen race, led by a mercenary army, upon their 
women and children. 

The tax-gatherers in a subjugated country are ahvays the 
worst men. Good men will not participate in the robbery of 
the people, and avoid such offices. 

What must be the condition of a country governed by its 
worst men, who use their wicked jiower to j)erpetuate itself. 



506 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Nothing but force can perpetuate such government, and no- 
thing but robbery can maintain such force. 

The tax-gatherers' government is but an adjunct to military 
dictation. No difference which precedes the other, they are 
mutually supporting, and survive or perish together. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 507 



CHAPTER III. 

The Spies. 



With the other vampyres which prey upon our liberties, are 
troops of private spies upon the business and opinions of men. 
Of all the detestable wretches that feed upon the frailties, follies, 
and vices of the people, there are none so universally loathed as 
the spy. 

As far back as military history and science found enduring 
record, the spy has been entitled to no more solemn trial than 
the drum-head court-martial, or no more dignified mode of death 
than the halter. 

Even noble earls and kings have been promptly put to death 
for the crime of acting as spy. 

The Earl of March, in 1328, was impeached, condemned and 
executed upon these two charges : — 

1. That he seized the government of the kingdom, without 
authority, and contrary to the express decree of Parliament. 

2. That he had placed spies around the King's person, upon 
all of his actions, that he might not free himself from them. 

King Richard II, was condemned for high treason, because he 
kept spies upon the people, to spy out their wealth and liberties, 
at the public expense, and claiming to be master and owner of 
his subjects' estates. 

This has been for the last six years, a government of spies. 
During the war, they were crowded into public houses, hired in 
kitchens, eaves-dropping in parlors, prowling around houses of 
ill-fame. In citizen's garb, he assumed the character of minis- 
ter, contractor, or politician, cheating the government out of 
money, and imposing upon the crednlity of the people. 

During the life-time of Lincoln, he kept three thousand spies 
in his employment. He relied entirely upon them for his knowl- 
edge of public affairs. But the system of spies is now so essen- 



508 CEIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

tially a part of the revenue machinery, that each assessor and col- 
lector has his spy at his hteels. 

This infamous vocation has become a remunerative business, 
under the fostering care of the government, as a part of the sys- 
tem of reform. These spies hire themselves to extortioners, and 
speculators, to make their periodical reports, and subject every 
business man to their caprice, either to be ruined by their malice, 
or impoverished by their black mail. 

It makes infidels of us all. We deny what we see, and scarcely 
credit our senses when we behold these things among us: that 
the tyrants who inflict them still live, and docility is lost in im- 
becility among the sufferers. 

These things were utterly unknown to our early institutions. 
It is difficult to realize the magnitude, power, and atrocity of 
this oppression. When its crushing weight first fell upon us, we 
were first surprised, then astonished, then appalled, then par- 
alyzed and subdued. 

All of our conceptions of the Swiss tyranny, in the conflict 
between Gessler and Tell, were more than realized. 

All the traditions of Jeffi'ey's court in the celebrated " bloody 
campaign," has been outdone before our eyes, in the murder of 
Mrs. Surratt. 

The petty annoyances of the landlord system, the miseries, 
oppressions, and robberies of Irish absenteeism, are so exactly 
renewed among us, that the blood is chilled in contemplation of 
the sufferings of a brave and honest people, determined to be 
free ; under a shameful and annoying espionage, unknown to 
free government, the opprobrium of all governments. 

This system will increase Avitli the growth of the other depart- 
ments of oppression. In France, there was in the times of Louis 
XVI, an army of patrols, constantly employed to secure their 
fiscal regulations against the inroads of contraband trade. 

Necker computes the number of these spies, in his time, at 
twenty thousand. In the civil and military service of the United 
States, the number is incredible and increasing, and as the mili- 
tary usurpation gradually extends northward, the ratio of spies 
and conspirators will grow more numerous and more insolent. 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 509 



CHAPTER IV. 

Military Usurpers. 

He is a silly fellow who dreams that such a debt as that which 
throws its dark shadow over our destiuy, cau be collected, with- 
out a standing army of mercenaries, of great magnitude and 
widely diffused. 

The first installment is a yoke now galling the necks of the 
Southern people, quite as much intended for the North ; and a 
quiet resignation to the unreasoning behests of military usurpa- 
tion, will be neither misinterpreted or misappropriated. Just as 
soon as the military authority is fully established over the civil 
power of the Southern States, it will then feel its way for the 
permanent establishment of military power in all of the North- 
ern States, for the double purpose of overawing the people, and 
giving employment to an increased standing army, officered by 
the sons, brothers, nephews, relatives, and friends of members of 
Congress. 

Immense standing armies have not only destroyed the liberties 
of every free people where they have been allowed a foothold, 
but they have as certainly bankrupted every monarchy or des- 
potism where they have been employed to enforce the laws of 
the kingdom, or edicts of the emperor. 

The Paine Military Bill is the consummation of the military 
government of the United States. When once in operation, 
soldiers will be placed in the neighborhood of every large man- 
ufactory, mine and furnace, to keep down strikes among the 
operatives. They will soon be a necessary appendage of every 
revenue collector's office, to seize for sale such property as may 
be necessary to pay the current taxes ; and act as spies upon the 
little remaining liberty of the poor, and detectives upon the 
property of the people. 



510 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

These hirelings will grind out the last remaining substance of 
the people, who are each year growing poorer under the crush- 
ing weiglit of oppression, and still they endure it. 

" Smitten stones will talk with fiery tongue ; 
And the worm, when trodden will turn ; 
But cowards, ye cringe to the cruelest wrongs, 

And answer with never a spurn. 
Then torture, oh tyrants, the spiritless drove, 

Old England's Helots will bear ; 
There's no hell in their hatred, no God in their love, 
Nor shame in their dearth's despair. 

For our fathers are praying for pauper pay, 
Our mothers with death's kiss are white, 
Our sons are the rich mau's serfs by day. 
And" our daughters his slaves by night, 

" The tearless are drunk with our tears ; have they 'driven 
The God of the poor man mad ? 
For we weary of waiting the help of Heaven, 

And the battle goes still with the bad. 
Oh, but death for death, and life for life; 

It were better to take and give. 
With hand to throat, and knife to knife, 

Than die out as thousands live ! 

For our fathers are praying for pauper pay. 
Our mothers with death's kiss are white ; 
Our sons are the rich man's serfs by day. 
And our daughters his slaves by night. 

" Fearless and few were the heroes of old. 

Who played the peerless part ; 
We are fifty-fold, but the gangrene gold 

Hath eaten out Hampden's heart. 
With their faces to danger, like freemen they fought, 

With their daring, all heart and hand ; 
And the thunder deed followed the lightning thought, 

When they stood for their own good land. 

For our fathers are praying, &c. 

" When the heart of one-half the world doth beat, 

Akin to the brave and tiue ; 
And the tramp of Democracy's earthquake feet, 

Goes thrilling the wide world through, 
We should not be living in darkness and dust, 

And dying like slaves in the night; 
But, big with the might of the inward ^ must,'' 

We should battle for freedom and right. 

For our fathers are praying," &c. 

To this extrenaity are the bondholders driving the people, un- 
willing to risk the payment of the hateful debt, in the ordinary 
chances of business. The bondholders, through their instru- 



CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 511 

ments in Congress, have invoked the military power, ostensibly 
to restore the Southern States to the " Union,^^ but really to or- 
ganize a monstrous standing army, to establish the English 
funding system, and collect the taxes, and pay the interest in all 
time to come, — to abolish the forms, as they have already de- 
stroyed, the spirit of liberty. 

"War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, 
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade. 
And to those roval murderers whose mean thrones 
Are bought by crimes of treacheiy and gore, 
The bread they eat, tiie staff on which they lean, 
Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround 
Their palaces, participate the crimes 
That force defends, and from a nation's rage 
Secures the crown, which all the curses reach 
That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe. 
These are the hired bravoes who defend 
The tyrant's throne — the bullies of his fear; 
These are the sinks and channels of worst vice. 
The refuse of society, the dregs 
Of all that is most vile ; their cold hearts blend 
Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, 
All that is mean and villainous with rage. 
Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt 
Alone might kindle. They are decked in wealth. 
Honor and power, then are sent abroad 
To do their work. The pestilence that stalks 
In gloomy triumph through some eastern land 
Is less destroying. They cajole with gold 
And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth 
Already crushed with servitude ; he knows 
His wretchedness too late, and cherishes 
Repentance for his ruin, when his doom 
Is sealed in gold and blood." 

The day of our degradation is here. Kever before in our 
brief, but glorious history, could any soldier, proud of his fame, 
have been bribed or forced or persuaded to hold military power, 
to crush out civil law. Anthony AVa3'ne, Ethan Allen, Israel 
Putnam, or Daniel Morgan, Francis Marion, old Wade Hamp- 
ton, Starke, or Sumpter, would rather have perished at the stake, 
in imitation of the heroic Crawford. Philip Schuyler, Nathan- 
ael Greene, Alexander Hamilton, or George Washington, scorned 
the money and despised the power of kings in such a demand. 
Benedict Arnold did do it, and the very jewels which glitter on 
their crowns of glory, are the more brilliant, when sparkling 
through the cloud that overhangs that other nameless name. 



512 CRIMES OF THE CIVIL WAE. ^ 

These were more than soldiers. They loved liberty, and un- 
derstood the cause in which they fought. 

"Washington, John Adams, his son, Jeiferson, or any of the 
fathers of liberty, would have perished, rather than promulgate 
this crime infernal. The military reconstruction law is a bid 
for anarchy and civil war. The country, by its lawgivers, is 
placed beyond the reach of law. 

" When xs'ero 
High over flaming Rome, with savage joy, 
Lowered like a fiend, dranlc witli enrajitiired ear 
The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld 
The frightful desolation spread, and felt 
A new created sense within his soul 
Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound : 
Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome 
The force of human kindness? And when Rome, 
"With one stern blow liurled not the tyrant down, 
Crushed not the arm, red with her dearest bloud, 
Had not submissive abjectness destroyed 
Nature's suggestions." — Qdekn Mab. 



THE END. 



SEP 9 



'V 



